(Ninjago) Book One: The Broken Ones
by CasCakes
Summary: As a new evil arises, so does a new elemental. She's laid low all these years, even though she's known about her elemental abilities. What if she meets the ninja? Will she join the team? What if something sparks between her and one of the guys? Ninjago is credited to Cartoon Network and it's creators.
1. Chapter One: The Beginning

Warnings (the entire book): some swears, blood, injury. And cake ㇱ6

Just a little about my OC...

Name: Cassidy "Cass" Emerson

Nicknames: Cass (Everyone), Windie (Jay and Kai), Wind Girl (Cole)

Nicknames for others: Flame-Brain (Kai), Zap Trap (Jay), The Tin-Man (Zane) Cake Boy (Cole), The Chosen One (Lloyd), Human Yoda #1 (Wu), Human Yoda #2 (Garmadon), Tech-Girl (Nya)

Age: 22 (Cole and Kai are 22. Jay and Jay are 21. Nya is 20. And Zane... Who knows? He's a fricken nindroid)

Element: Wind

Color: Purple

Appearance: She has long and curly brown hair that goes a little past her breasts, with Green-Brown Hazel eyes. She's 5'5"

Family: Amanda (Sister),

Backstory: she's lived in Jamanakai village all of her life. Her mother died when she was younger, leaving her dad to take care of her and her sister. She found out about her elemental powers when she was 16. Her mother was the Wind Elemental Master before her, giving her her powers. Until she was 20, she'd helped people with her powers. Since then, she's stayed low and off if the battle field, until now.

* * *

Chapter One: The Beginning

I covered my eyes from the blinding morning sun as I woke up. Stretching, I yawned and glanced over at my alarm clock. "Great, it's seven," I sighed. I always got up around eight, but for some reason I woke up at seven today. I wouldn't even try to get back to sleep so I just decided to get up. I let my legs dangle off of the side of my bed and sat there lazily. As much as I wanted to, I didn't feel like getting up.

I changed my mind when my stomach growled. I rubbed my stomach "Looks like I gotta feed you," I said to my stomach as if it was a living thing. Right when I got to opening my bedroom door, an amazing smell filled my nose. "Oh my god," it smelt so good, it seemed like bacon and eggs. I walked downstairs and to the kitchen, to find my sister Amanda making breakfast.

She noticed me and smiled "Hey, you're up early," yeah, it was true. We had a huge difference when it came to our sleeping habits. I always went to bed late and got up late. With her, it was the complete opposite, her going to bed early and waking up early.

I nodded "Yeah," I walked to the island in the middle of the kitchen and leaned up against it, crossing my legs. "Well, breakfast certainly smells good today," I flashed her a smile as she did to me only seconds before. She was an amazing cook, and I always appreciated her food. I saw that it was bacon and eggs. And yet again, my nose was right. "You're awesome, you know that, right?"

She chuckled. "You bet," she pointed a spatula at me. She was just finishing up cooking breakfast as I got down there, and she put the food on a couple of plates. "Sorry if it's not a lot, I wasn't expecting you for breakfast, so I didn't bother making enough for two," she normally left earlier for work on Mondays, so I wasn't expecting to wake up to her cooking. She worked at the Jamanakai medical center down the street most days out of the week, excluding the weekends.

"It's fine," I assured her. "I appreciate this, though, I could never pass up on your cooking," She handed me my plate and we both sat at the island. I started eating, savoring every bite I took. "So, you coming back at your normal time?" I questioned her. The night before, she told me that she might have been coming home early and we could watch a movie or something together.

She shrugged. "I don't know, I need to talk to my boss," she told me. I was really wishing that she could because we haven't had sister time with each other in a while. "Sorry if I don't end up coming back early. I'll make up for if sometime if I can't," she promised me. I knew that she'd keep that promise, she wasn't the kind of person who would break a promise. She always kept her word, no matter what that word was.

"Thanks, but it's okay if you can't. There's always next time," I wasn't sure when next time would be, but it had to come around eventually. I put my elbow up on the counter and rested my hand in my hand. "Well, anyways, I'm going to end up going into town sometime today, but I should be back by the time you might end up coming back."

"That's fine," she gave me an approving nod. I told one of my friends that I would help them with something stupid. They needed help moving something through town, and they asked me to help them move it, so I agreed. I knew that I could get it done fairly quickly, plus I owed them after they helped me out with something. "Well, I got to get going," she told me as she put her plate in the sink.

"Okay, bye, see you later," I waved to her as she left. I quickly finished up my own breakfast and put my plate on top of hers in the sink. I didn't even bother doing the dishes, I always waited until the sink was almost overflowing to do them, I just didn't feel like doing it at the moment. I had a good few hours or so before I was supposed to help out my friend, and I had nothing to pass the time with.

I walked out to the living room and plopped onto the couch. I stared at the blank screen of the TV. I didn't bother trying to find something to watch. There just wasn't anything good on to watch in the morning, it's hard to deny.

Somehow, I managed to fall asleep in the short amount of time I had to wait. I fell into a dream where I was flying, like, with no plane or anything. I thought that it would be awesome to really do that, but it was impossible, obviously. In the middle of my strangely amazing dream, I was startled by a knock at the door.

I jump a little, shouting out "I'm up!" I looked around the living room and remembered I'd fallen asleep. I rubbed my eyes and walked to the door, opening it up to see my friend, Avery. "Hey," I greeted her with half-awake voice and a hug.

"Hey, to you too," she said as we pulled away. I walked outside next to her and closed the door behind me. "I really appreciate you helping me out," she admitted.

"No problem," it still wasn't a problem to me. Like I said, I owed her and it was the least I could do. I started walking with her to her house, which was only a few blocks from mine. "Okay, so, what exactly is it that I'm helping you move?" I questioned. I never really asked what I was going to help her move, until now.

"Oh," she looked over at me "Just this old piece of junk that my dad left behind," I wasn't going to ask what it was, because knowing her dad, it was probably some old hunting thing or something.

"Okay," I nodded. We continued walking down the road, me with my arms folded behind my head. It only took us about five minutes to walk to her house. It was nice to get a little morning air, i never really went out on morning walks.

We finally got to Avery's house, and she took me to her back yard shed. She opened it up and I stood outside. She dug threw a pile of junk, most of it looking like it was her dad's hunting stuff. "Hold on," She said before she finally pulled out some stuff. It was a huge box of hunting equipment, like I had suspected. "Sorry that it's a lot, and that it's heavy, but we should be able to get this done quickly. Just need to bring these over to Kevin," She told me. He was a guy who loved hunting as well, who she told me did, which I guessed she was giving the equipment to.

"Alright," I grabbed one of the ends of the box, Avery grabbing the other end. I was the one walking backwards while carrying it, so I kept looking over my shoulder once and a while. I looked back over at Avery. "So, you think he'll like this stuff?" I questioned her.

She nodded "Probably. This is all collectors stuff, or something. I don't exactly know how useful this stuff is, but it always did my dad good. So, I guess so," As we walked, people stared at the large box of Hunting Equipment. I guess that it wasn't normal to see two girls walking through a small town with a huge box full of hunting stuff.

It didn't take us that long to get to the guy, Kevin's, house, that she was talking about. You'd think that in Jamanakai, it being as small as it was, that I would know him, but I didn't. I knew most of the people in Jamanakai Village, being friends with them all. It was really hard not to know everyone, but it would be interesting to meet someone new. We dropped the box onto the ground in front of the guy's house. Avery turned to his house, yelling "I'm here with the stuff!"

We waited for a second before he came out. He was a younger guy, around my age, probably 24 or 24 or 25. He greeted us with a smile. "Thanks," he looked at Avery, then me "Who's your friend?"

"This is Cassidy."

"Cass," I corrected her. I preferred to be called Cass. All my friends called me Cass, and I was only called Cassidy for formal situations. Cass was just my nickname, and thank god I didn't grow up with Cassie as my nickname, oh how much I hated that name.

"Well, nice to meet you, Cass."

"Same to you," I said back to him. He seemed nice, so I knew I'd be putting him on my list of friends. "Well anyways, I'm gonna go head back home. I'll we ya guys around," I waved at them as I started back for my house.

I walked a little slowly so I could enjoy the nice fresh air a little longer. It was a really nice day, sunny and in the 70's. I looked at people around me enjoying themselves. It was always peaceful around Jamanakai Village, something I could easily enjoy. I've always enjoyed peace, no doubt in my mind.

Not a lot of people knew about my past. I was someone that people saw as normal, but had a past they'd never could have guessed. I actually know how to fight, and have used that for good. Since I was little, probably around ten, I've trained under my dad to fight. There was never a day I wasn't training, whether it being hand-to-hand or with a weapon.

Another thing, that is definitely unbelievable, is the past of my mother. I never knew her that well, but I'd certainly want to meet her. She was… unique, not like most people. She was an elemental. What else makes it unbelievable? Her powers were passed down to me. I was a second generation elemental, the Wind Elemental.

I've heard of other elementals around Ninjago, but I've never come to look for them or anything. I, personally, have gone around to help people, using my power for good. That was since I was 17, and now, me being 23, I'm settled down with my sister. We don't know why, but she doesn't have the same power as I do, or any for that matter. We guess that it's because our dad wasn't one, her getting that from him.

I stopped when I saw a couple of kids messing around near the towns fountain. The nice, calm mood suddenly changed when the sound of a scream filled the air. I froze and looked around. I knew that someone was in danger, so I dashed in the direction that that scream came

from. I rushed passed people who all, too, looked in the direction of the scream.

I stopped at an alley way and saw a woman, who I presumed was the one that screamed, running out. She was out of breathe, as she approached me. "What's wrong?" I questioned, determined to help her in any way I could.

I looked back into the alley and then to me "They, they attacked me! You need to stop them!" She exclaimed. I could see she was a little beaten up, with a couple of already formed bruises and cuts.

I nodded, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I'll take care of it, just get somewhere safe," She nodded back at me, and ran off.

I looked into the alley, wondering who she was talking about. I ran down the alley in search for who ever she was talking about. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw a few dark figures running. I knew that was them, so I went chasing after them. The chase led me to the edge of the mountain to see a path that I saw them run down. I continued down the path, not giving up. I had to catch them, and get justice for the women. I wasn't going to stop until I did so.


	2. Chapter Two: A Lot Like Me

Chapter Two: A Lot Like Me

I heard the crunching of the rocks underneath my feet as I ran down the mountain. I couldn't see them, but they couldn't have gotten far, so there was still a chance of catching them. "You might as well come out now!" I yelled out to them as I continued running. I scanned the surround area and didn't see much other than rocks around me.

"Like hell we will!" I heard someone shout back at me. I was dealing with them for less than five minutes, and they were already starting to piss me off. When they yelled, I knew that they weren't as smart as I thought they would be. Who yells out when they're being chased? Only an idiot would, which is how I started to see them.

I took a second to think about which direction the yell came from. I saw another path, which I had a gut feeling was the way that they had run. I made my way down the path and stopped when I came across some footprints on the ground. I knelt down beside it to get a good look at them, then looked in the direction they were heading in. "Perfect," I stood up and followed them.

It was good that I found the tracks or I could have ended up on a wild goose chase trying to find them. That wouldn't stop me though, because nothing would stop me from finding them. I was set on catching them and getting justice for the women that they attacked.

I focused on finding them, staying calm the entire time, along with keeping my guard. Even though they seemed a little stupid to me at the moment, that didn't mean they weren't good fighters. Whenever in battle, no matter the enemy, it's never good to underestimate them. It leaves you vulnerable to being overpowered by them, and them with the upper hand.

Lost in my thoughts, I heard the couple of people running not that far away from me. "Aha," I whispered to myself as I turned and ran after them "I'm going to catch you, if it's the last thing I do!" I claimed, knowing I would. I hear them again, and raised my fist ready to fight the enemy that life was just about to throw at me any moment.

I stopped again when the constant sound of running disappeared. I took a couple of deep breaths to catch my breath, looking around again. Where the hell did they go? I thought to myself. I heard a rapid sound behind me, so I turned to see what it was. Before I knew it, someone jumped on me. Who ever it was, pinned me to the ground and had managed a tight grip around my wrists.

My eyes widened at who I saw, or better said, what I saw. How? I thought… I thought that they were gone. I knew their orange, black and grey color anywhere "Damn Constrictai," I stared at him for a second, not believing my eyes. The last I'd heard of them was months ago, and even then, it was scarce to see them. That was when that overlord stuff happened, that's the last time I'd ever fought any.

"Surprised to see us?" He hissed in my face.

The horrid odor of his breath filled my nose. I wanted to cover it, but I couldn't since he was restraining my wrists. God, I really hate snakes! "No, but you know what, you can go slithering back to your cave!" I managed to shift my legs so they were under his stomach and him up into the air with my wind. I watched him go flying and then land a little ways away from me "And why don't you brush your teeth!" I hopped to my feet and saw that there were three more snakes surrounding me. I moved my foot back, and smirked "Come and get some."

Moments later, one of them attempted to punch me, but I grabbed his arm. He struggled away, but there was no way I was letting go "Let go of me!"

"In your dreams," I grinned at him as I threw him over my shoulder and into a rock behind me. I turned to the other two, who both were running at me. I punched in their direction, letting out a gust of wind and knocking them back. "Come on, that can't be the best that you can do!" I taunted them, when I felt something move underneath my feet. "What the hell?"

Before I knew it, something, one of the Constrictai, came out of the ground and grabbed my leg. He pulled me under and through the hole that he had dug. I tried gripping to the sides in order to stop myself from being dragged any father, but I just kept on getting dragged. The rough stone around me rubbed against my skin, irritating it. I wouldn't be surprised if I was a little beat up after this, what would I tell my sister? She knew about me being an elemental and all, but how would she take me coming home in the condition I was in?

Still being dragged through the dark tunnel, I felt the ground around me shake. It wasn't like before, when the snake was burrowing through it. It had more force to it, a lot more compared to when the snake did it. What was causing it?

The ground above us cracked as a hand reached and grabbed the snake by the leg. "Wha-" he was about to say before he was dragged back to the surface, along with me. Once I saw daylight again, I was thrown and landed on the ground.

"What did we tell you about messing with the locals?" I heard an unfamiliar voice tell the snake. I looked up to see a guy with black shaggy hair standing over him. I could see that he was dealing with the snake, and probably have dealt with them before, but I didn't need any help. I could have gotten myself out of that situation, if I had a little more time.

I saw a couple of the snakes sneaking up on the stranger, and I shouted "Look out!" He saved my butt, so I returned him the favor by striking down the two snakes behind him with my wind. He looked back in shock, which i pressured was from my elemental ability. It's not everyday you just stumble upon an elemental. The other snake was about to grab him, but I warned him "Behind you!"

I, myself, was shocked at what I saw. He turned around and a piece of rock came out of the ground and hit the snake unconscious. I sat there dumbfounded, just realizing he was an elemental too. I couldn't believe it! Like I said, it wasn't everyday that you see an elemental, especially if you're one yourself. "You're an elemental?"

"Yeah," he nodded when he turned to me. He approached me and held out a hand.

I grabbed it and he helped me up. "Thanks," I flashed him a smile, rubbing some dirt off of my jeans. "So, uh, what are you doing here?" I questioned him. It couldn't have been for the snake, right? He couldn't have gotten there that fast.

"Came here to deal with the damn snakes. I saw that you were trying to do the same, right?"

I nodded "He got me by the leg and pulled me under. Could have handled myself, but you came along, and now I'm here," I was appreciative of his help, but I knew that I still could have handle it myself. It was nice to have some support, though, because I was able to escape faster than I probably would have. I flashed him a smile. "Thanks, I appreciate the help."

He returned the smile. "No problem. By the way, I'm Cole. Cole Hence."

"I'm Cassidy Emerson. Call me Cass, though, unless you want your butt kicked," I warned him. I hated when my own sister who I've known all my life called me that, so I would never let a stranger call me by the name. My thoughts shifted over to him and who he was. I knew I've heard that name before. Cole… Where have I heard that name before? After thinking about it for a minute, I realized who he was. "Hey, aren't you one of those, uh, ninja guys?"

He chuckled. "Yeah, I am," It was really weird actually talking to another elemental, especially one of the more famous ones. I knew of more, like the other ones that are ninja as well. Then there was ones like Karlof, master of metal, and Griffin Turner, master of speed. Me, as an elemental, didn't exactly make myself known, since I stopped using my powers around ninjago a few years prior, except for a few small occasions to fight some snakes. "Anyways, how come I've never heard of you? I thought I knew of all of the Elemental Masters."

"Oh," And that's where it comes in, whenever someone sees me and my powers they're always like I didn't know there was a Wind Elemental. Of course, because I've like never used my powers in the last few years. I scratched the back of my head. "About that, I haven't exactly used my powers much lately, like in the two or so years you and your friends have."

"How come?" He questioned.

"Don't really know," I shrugged "I was out traveling Ninjago, helping people and everything, but I was away from my sister the entire time. I guess I just missed her, she missed me as well, so I decided to stay with her for a while. And a while ended up being a good few years, that's all."

We silence fell between the two of us. It was getting a little awkward, because it seemed like neither of us knew exactly what to say. "So," he coughed a little "I feel like my sensei, maybe even my team, would like to meet you. I know it's really weird to hear a stranger saying I know someone who might want to meet you. But, I'm serious."

I looked over at him with an eyebrow raised. "Your team? Why?" I was surprised that he brought that up. I was just another elemental, so I guessed that maybe they wanted to know every one that's known to be alive.

"Yeah, you may or may not know, but I'm on a team of four other elementals. What you do know, is that we're all ninja. Elemental ninja, that is. There's me, the earth elemental. The others are the Fire, Ice and Lightning Elementals, along with the Energy elemental," I noticed that they were all the most common elements, unlike ones such as metal, smoke, mind and sound. Like seriously, how the hell is mind an element? "And they might want to know you, and possibly gain you as a new ally."

Was he serious? New ally? I just met him and he was already talking about becoming allies? I wasn't completely against it or anything, I was just really shocked by his question. "Ah, okay. But still, why are you asking me to do that? I'm just a normal person, who has a normal life, nothing special. I don't see why you'd want me to meet them."

"What do you mean? You're an elemental, not a lot of people have that ability. You're special, you know, one of a kind. You've got something special inside of you that no one else has. You should be proud to be like that, use it for good. I mean, you shouldn't let it go to waste."

I thought about what he just told me. I guess that he was right. I loved the feeling I would get after helping someone, it always made me feel like I was useful. Now, I was just living in Jamanakai Village with my sister. "Hey, I'll take your offer into consideration."

"Okay," He smiled. "Come find me if you decided you do," He told me about this place, what he called Garmadons Monastery. He said that it was somewhere in the mountains outside of Ninjago. It was farther in than Jamanakai Village, it's supposed to take a while to get there from New Ninjago City, buy because I lived in Jamanakai Village, it wouldn't take as long.

"I will," I said, and before I knew it, he was off. That was a very interesting moment, I was still surprised I ran into another Elemental. It was even more interesting to have him say that his team would probably like to meet me. I thought about his offer, and I certainly had big decision to make. Would I go, or not?


	3. Chapter Three: Going, Going, Gone

Chapter Three: Going, Going, Gone

I walked back to Jamanakai Village, it not being that far from where I was. I looked down at my clothes, they were dirty as hell. My pants were ruined, but it didn't really matter to me. And my sweatshirt, it was dirty and a little ruined as well. Now that's what I was worried about. It was my favorite one, the only pull over sweatshirt that I had, and for some reason I could never find a new one. I didn't care if I needed to, I refused to get rid of it.

I sighed and my mind shifted back to what had happened only moments prior. I was still surprised that he had asked me that. I was still debating if I'd end up going or not. He did bring up a good point, I'll give him that. It was true, elemental abilities aren't something that should be just thrown aside. All My life, I've wanted to be able to help people, and I had something that would help me do that. It didn't help that I hid my powers and ceased to use them.

I folded my hands behind my head as I walked, with a sigh. I had a lot to think about, with this situation. I really didn't see that harm in it. I mean, how could something bad happen because of it? The more I thought about it, I felt like I'd end up going. Maybe it would be good? It seemed as like he was saying that he just wanted me to talk to them, that was all. But about what? That was the question that raced through my mind the most.

Jamanakai Village finally came into sight, and I was relieved. I really wanted to get home so I could get cleaned up and everything. Also, I wanted to talk to Amanda about what just happened. The snake. Cole, who was an elemental as well. Me being invited to talk to him and his team. What would she think of all of this? Even I thought that it was little a little crazy, and I'm the one who's dealt with things like that… to an extent.

She was never a fighter, unlike me, who was. When I was out training with my dad, she was inside doing other things. Maybe she was jealous that I was the one with the elemental abilities and she wasn't? I highly doubted it, because she would have told me about it. She just didn't like those things, I guess. Yeah, knowing her, that was the most logical reason behind it.

I didn't exactly know how I would tell her about what happened. I mean, how do you just bring it into conversation? Um, okay, so I might have chased down these guys, who turned out to be snakes , and ran into another elemental. And he asked me if I wanted to meet some other ones… Yeah, that would never be something easy to bring into a conversation. I needed to be serious about it, like, really serious about it.

I really wanted to make it so she wouldn't get worried about me, and tell me not to go. She's always worried about me, and knowing her, she was bound to tell me to stay, to forget about his offer. But how could I just do this? It caught my attention that the elemental invited me to mean other elementals. I never came around to go looking for any of them, and this was my chance to meet some other ones.

As I started to think about it, I kind of wanted to go and meet them. Lately, I've been thinking about going back and helping people. Maybe this was my chance? I couldn't pass this up, I just couldn't. I'd probably need to have a long talk with my sister, but I bet that I'd be able to convince her that it was a good idea.

I finally got back to my house, which was a relief. Walking in, my sister was no where in sight. It was only around twelve, so I still had about an hour. She wasn't there then, which made me presume that she didn't get to come back early. Thank god for that! I made my way up for my room, but was startled by "Hey Cass, you're back," It was her, from her room. Crap! Of course I thought that she wasn't, when she really was. I tried getting to my room before she came out of her own " I'm surprised it took you this long," She froze when she saw me.

Yeah, today I was NOT having much luck. "Um," I didn't exactly know what to say.

"What happened to you?!" She questioned, concern evident in her voice. She walked over to me, and looked at what had happened to me. Yeah, this was going to be a hard thing to explain to her.

"I can explain," I insisted. "Someone got attack in town, so I went after them. I ended up fighting them, and things got a little rough, it's no biggy," It really wasn't, it's not like it was something I couldn't handle or anything. I didn't actually get hurt, just a little dirty, so it wasn't that bad.

"No biggy? , look at you! You look like crap right now!" Geez, thanks for pointing out the obvious, Captain Obvious. I knew that she was worried about me and all, but she was already making it a big deal. "Go get cleaned up, and then we need to talk about it."

"We don't need to talk about it."

"Yes, we do," She looked me in the eyes, expecting me to do that.

"Ugh, fine, I'll be out in a few," I went into my room, and sighed. I only had a few minutes to think about what I was going to say. I needed to convince her that it would be fine, that was the hard part. I didn't rush to get a new pair of pants on, and take off my sweatshirt off to leave me with a purple tank top on. I jogged back downstairs, where Amanda had gone.

She turned to me, saying "Okay, now, we talk."

At sat on the couch, across from her on the matching red armchair. "Okay," I started, gulping. "Let's just say that I got into a fight with, some, um, snakes. Then this guy came and helped me."

She raised an eyebrow "Seriously, snakes?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "I know, that they haven't been around for a while, but I'm taking it that they're back." Saying it out loud made it sound crazy. They'd been gone for a while, and they just popped up all of a sudden? I find it really weird, on so many levels.

"And this guy?"

"You probably won't believe me, but, he was an elemental. He kind of saved me and everything from being attacked by one of them."

"You mean, like mom?" she wondered, me nodding in confirmation. She sat back in her chair and put her hand on her forehead "This is all crazy, I swear. So this guy helped you fight against them? What element?" She seemed like she was getting interested in what I had to say. If I were her, I'd be interested in it as well.

"Earth. And that's not all."

"What else could there be?"

I scratched the back of my neck. This was the moment I needed to man up and just tell her, it wasn't that hard. "He told me he knows some other elementals. And, uh, he kind of wants me to meet them. I'm kind of thinking of accepting his offer." I was really curious to see her reaction. What would she end up saying about it? Would she agree with it or now? Finally, I was about to find out.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. So you'd just go there, and talk to them?"

"I know that's crazy too, but I think it'd be good for me. You know how I've been talking about wanting to go and help people again? This is my chance, Amanda. Now that I know there's other elementals, it's even better. I mean, if I ever need help, and I get along with these guys, I might even have some allies."

She looked at me, speechless for a second. I waited anxiously for a response... What was she going to say? She sighed. "I just don't want you to get hurt. You're my baby sister, I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Hey, I'd be fine. I'm a pretty good fighter, I can handle myself. You don't always need to worry about me, I mean, I'm twenty-two."

"I know. Just, be careful." I really loved how much she cared about it, but she cared too much at times, as it, all the time.

"Amanda, I will. Nothing bad will happen, so I don't see why you think that. I'm just going to talk to them. I know I can trust them, they're elementals, the good ones. I'm going soon, I just want to let you know," I felt really bad that I was going, because I'd only worry her. But this was important, I wanted to go, and felt obligated to do so.

"Okay," she nodded "I want you to go now." Did she really approve of me going? Even if she didn't, I'd end up going anyways. I didn't just want to, I felt like I had to. I couldn't explain it, it was just a gut feeling, I guess. It was as if something was pulling me to go, I couldn't just ignore the feeling.

"I was going to wait till later, though, we were supposed to do something," I tried, but was cut off by her.

"Hey, I can see that this is important to you, and I don't want to stop you from going. There's always another time, we can make a rain check. Okay?" I really appreciated that she was willing to do that, just to let me leave that day. "Please, go."

I nodded "Okay, I will. I appreciate you letting me go now. I really want to see what they'd say. That tournament thing happened a little while ago, where they saw all of the other elementals, beside me. So I bet that they'd be surprised when they see me or something like that," Tournament of Elements, I was invited to participate in it like the others were, I just didn't go. Why? I didn't have a reason to. I was already laying low, and I didn't have a reason to go. On the invitation, it said that they had my dad, but he's dead. I found it as some kind of sick joke, so I refused to go. Who does that? Claim that they have someone's dead father? Yeah, no thank you.

"Same, I bet they are, too. So, I'll let you get ready, you should go soon."

I nodded, getting up "I was going to do that soon as I could anyways," I stretched a little, looking back at my sister. I wanted to leave right then, and I had nothing to bring. It's not like I was staying or anything, it was just going to be a talk, that's all. I started for the door and waved back at her. "See you later."

"Yeah, see you later, too," she waved back at me as I was leaving out the door. I hoped that things would go well when I got to that place that Cole was walking about. Why wouldn't they? They were the good guys, and I was in their side, there was no reason for us to fight. All I could do was get there, and see how things played out. This would be an interesting night for sure.


	4. Chapter Four: The Future is Now

Chapter Four: The Future Is Now

I walked through the mountains, yet again, so I could get to this so called monastery. I've never actually been to one, so it would be interesting to visit one for the first time. My dad always told me that my mom would go to them, sometimes with other elementals, to train. They worked well with each other for a while, until they went to war with the Anacondrai. I've only been told a little about it, and how some of them turned against each other. I don't see why, we're suppose to fight for humanity, not against it.

I was glad that I haven't heard of any from this generation that have done that. Maybe now, when I talk with Cole and his team, l can join up with them all and make a difference. I know that there isn't a huge threat around anymore, but that shouldn't stop us from fighting. When they first formed (from what I can tell), they fought with Garmadon, along with the snakes and skeleton. I didn't do anything big, or out there, but I went around and fought them here and there. It wasn't until a little bit before the whole Great Devourer incident that I actually died down a little.

If I could go back, I'd go back and change that. I don't see why I ever stopped fighting, so I could make a difference. I've sometimes felt guilty because I left, and didn't keep fighting against the evils of . So much more happened after I stopped, and I know I could have made a difference. I could have saved people. Thinking about it left an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

I knew that I wanted to go back out again, my sister would definitely understand. If I talked to her, there was a huge chance that she'd agree. There was no doubt that she'd feel a little off about it at first, but would still agree. My mind is in the right place about this, she'd understand. Why would she stop me from doing this, fighting again? There was no reason except not wanting her baby sister to get hurt. I'd make sure to visit her this time, so she wouldn't have to worry about me.

But… What would Cole and his team think about all of this? They'd definitely support it, for sure, but still, what would they say about it. Like, would they just talk to me and have me go off by myself? Would they let me stick around for a little while? Either way, they were going to talk to me, and I had to wait to find out a little bit longer.

The walk there was crazy long, by the time I saw the place, my feet hurt. I'd been walking for a good couple of hours without a break. As I walked up to it, I observed a few smaller buildings scattered around the property. I wasn't exactly sure what they were used for, but they looked like small houses of some sorts. I stopped at the large structure that stood before me. "Whoa," It amazed me, I'd never seen anything like it. Yeah, it had a similar design to building in other parts of Ninjago, but it was something different. It's not everyday day you come across a place like this.

Speaking of the monastery, where were people? No one was outside, so we they inside? Yeah, of course they were, where else were they? I opened the door and peaked my head in, and a large hallway came into view. Yet again, it was quiet and the presence of anyone else ceased to fill the room. "Damn, where are they?" I questioned no one in particular. It seemed odd that no one was around, I knew that they were there. Cole told me they would be, and he wouldn't direct me to the wrong place. Unless… this was the wrong monastery. I highly doubted that, because how many could be out here?

I slipped into the monastery and heard the door slam behind me. I looked back at it, wishing that it hadn't slammed like that. What if someone thought that I was an intruder or something? Now that, that would be bad, really bad. But he told them that have been coming, right?

I started walking down a long hall, and still no one. I sighed "Where are people?" You'd think that there would be someone around, anyone at all. "Hello?" I called out in hopes someone would hear me. After a couple of minutes of searching, I felt as if someone was watching me. I froze in my tracks and looked around. "I know someone's there," I tried, but someone jumped at me.

Just like earlier that day, with the snakes, they pinned me down. I looked up to see who it was, and saw a guy, who was also around my age, with short orange hair. "Who are you and why are you here?!" He demanded.

"Get off of me!"

"I asked, why are you here!?"

"Because, I'm suppose to!" I snapped. I struggled away from him, but it was useless. I had only one resort left "sorry about this," I said as I hit him away with my wind. He went flying into the wall behind him, and fell to the ground. I stood up and put my fists in the air, ready to fight if needed. "If only you let me explain, I could tell you that I was invited," I said as I saw a couple of guys running around a corner. Out of the three, Cole was there. Dear god, was that one of his teammates? "I am SO sorry!" I claimed.

They ran near us, and the one in green clothes helped the one I forced into the wall up. Cole, and one with red clothes, walked up to me. "Nice to see that you came," he admitted, looking over at his teammate "and I'm surprised you managed to do that to Jay," okay, so that was Jay. I just had three more to meet.

I let my arms fall back to my side "It was nothing. And I'm serious, sorry about that."

Jay rubbed his back. "I-It's fine. I did attack to after all, I would have done the same thing," he flashed a smile. He and the other one walked up to the three of us.

"So," Cole started "That's Jay. Then there's Kai, and Lloyd. Zane's somewhere around here, haven't seen him all day though."

"Hey," kai waved at me.

"So, you're the one Cole was talking about?" Lloyd greeted with a chuckle. "Nice to meet you, especially since you're an elemental. Never knew there was a wind elemental," Yep, I know. Like I said, I've never done much lately, or made a name for myself. So it didn't surprise me they haven't.

I scratched the back of my head. "I know," I quickly explained to them how I hadn't fought much since a couple of years ago, just around the time of the whole Great Devourer incident.

"That's quite the story," Kai admitted. "Too bad you didn't stick around, fight a little bit," he tried, but Jay elbowed him "I mean, it's always good to know that there's another elemental around."

I knew that at least one of them would end up bringing that up, saying that I should have stuck around and fight. I probably would have said the exact same thing to myself, so I couldn't blame Kai for saying that. "It's fine, I get it. You shouldn't let powers like these go to waste. I've had a few people tell me that, the very few people that have found out about them," I told him. I hoped that they didn't lose respect for me because of that. For all I knew, they didn't agree with my choice and saw me as a coward for it.

"You shouldn't feel bad about it," Lloyd spoke up "None of us really used our powers much before a little while before the tournament, so no hard feelings, am I right?"

I nodded "I guess," okay, if they'd already lost respect for me, he wouldn't have said that, and the others would have disagreed with him. So, it's good to know that they haven't yet. It would really suck if they do eventually, that's the last thing I would want.

Jay looked at me for a moment, then turned to Cole, asking "So, now that she's here, what do we do?" I never really thought about that part, because I wasn't sure what to expect out of my visit here.

"I wanted her to meet you guys, along with Nya, Sensei, and Garmadon. Maybe we can see what she can do. Then see if she knows about any of the other elementals," I heard Cole say.

Okay, so now I knew what was going to happen while I was here. "Why don't we get to it then?" Kai wondered. He got nod from the others. He turned to me "Okay then. We told our sensei and his brother, also a Sensei, that we'd take you to meet them once you got here, so follow us."

"Okay," I agreed, following behind them as they started down the hall. This would definitely be interesting. I started to think, and realized that this sensei of theirs had to be Wu, the one I've heard about a couple of times. If I remember correctly, my dad's told me that he's met him a few times when my mom visited him back in the days of the old Elemental Masters. Same with this Garmadon guy. I've heard stories about them, the other elemental masters, and my mother fighting together, so they had to have known her.

"So, how many elementals do you know about?" Lloyd asked me.

Still walking with them, I told him "You guys of course, along with Metal, Speed, Mind, Gravity, Sound, and Amber. I know there's more, but I can't name them at the top of my head. I still don't see how some of them can be considered elements. Like, mind, how is that an element?"

"I know right!" Jay agreed.

"Hey, if there's an elemental for it, then it can be considered an element," Kai interrupted us. I got that there was an elemental for it, it still didn't make sense that it was an element. He stopped us and turned to a door. "Well, anyways, they're in here," I heard. In a few seconds, I'd be talking to their sensei, someone my mom once knew and fought beside with. I needed to play things cool, and see where things ended up.


	5. Chapter Five: Don't I Know You?

Chapter Five: Don't I know you?

I took a deep breath as they slided to door open, and a couple of people came into view. First, it was a young girl with short black hair, who looked as if she was a few years younger than me. Then there was an older guy, who had a long white beard. I would take it that the one with long hair was Wu.. I knew that he was Lloyd's uncle, so it wasn't that hard to figure out. "Ah, I see you've finally arrived," he said. Okay, don't get me wrong, but his beard is awesome. It seems to give him… To give him an unexplainable wiseness.

"I like just got here, after a really long walk. I was planning on coming, there's no way in hell that i'd pass up an opportunity like this," I told him, exactly like I've been thinking for a little bit before now. "I was actually thinking that this would be something good for me, somehow. I've been thinking that I might start doing things. Yeah, there may not be any big threats around, but that doesn't mean that there's not still good to be done around Ninjago."

The girl, who I still had no idea was, smiled at me. "You're right, and it's good that you've been thinking that. It's always useful to have people willing to fight for the good of humanity, especially an elemental," I nodded at her statement. "Oh, by the way, I'm Nya, Kai's sister," Hm, I never knew that he had a sister.

Before Wu had the chance to introduce himself, I spoke up "I know who you are. You're Wu, uncle of Lloyd and son of the Spinjitzu Master. My Dad's told me a little bit about you. It's an honor to actually get the chance to meet you."

He chuckled a little "It's nice to finally meet you as well. I knew that your mother had a couple of children, but I just never got the chance to meet you," by the sounds of it, my mother or father never took me or my sister to meet him. My mom died around the time that I was two, but I would have suspected that she would have brought my sister to meet them at least one or twice.

"I haven't heard from her in years, how is she doing?" Wu asked. I looked over at him, realizing that he was oblivious to the fast that she was dead. I don't see why, my dad told me that she died in battle. Wasn't she fighting by his side? Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe she was fighting with other ones, or even possibly alone.

In a low tone, I said "She passed when I was young, I'm surprised you don't know about her death."

The others looked at me for a second, all raising an eyebrow. "You can't be serious… What happened to her?" Garmadon added. I explained the part about her dying in battle "We weren't there when that happened, and none of the other masters told us about it. We all promised that we'd inform each other about a death of one of us if it so happened. I don't see why one of them wouldn't have said anything."

Yeah, she probably did go down when she was fighting solo. But how could my dad have know about her dying in battle if she really did? "Um, I've been guessing that she was battling alone when it happened. I really don't know, that's all that my dad's told me and my sister."

"That sucks," Jay admitted.

I nodded "It does, it really does."

"I don't know what happened to my mother either, it's not an easy feeling to live with," Kai added in to what Jay had just said.

I sighed "It isn't. Anyways, can we get cracking on whatever it was we were going to do," I insisted. I really didn't want to keep talking about my mom, because I wanted to keep it in my past, and I didn't want it to turn into a big deal. People are always like I'm SO sorry, you must be miserable. Yeah, it sucks to have grown up without a mother, but I learned to live with it, it was something that couldn't have been changed, and you need to learn to live with those things. I prefer not to over think about the past, especially things like this.

The others were silent for a second, but Cole said "Sure. Now that we know that you wanna get back to fighting, why don't we see what you can do?" He asked. I wasn't surprised that he brought that up, I knew that seeing what I could do would come up eventually.

I folded my hands behind my head, stretching "Sure, why not?" My arms fell back down to my side, and I looked around at the others. "I can't guarantee that I'll be the best, because two years of not fighting an opponent sure can do something to elemental powers. So don't expect anything that's a 10/10," I told them. In the past two years, I have been practicing with my powers, but it was just me trying out some moves with my powers in the forest a couple of miles from Jamanakai Village. I also did quite a bit of kickboxing, but it was never against an opponent, so i would need to get used to that again.

"That's fine," Lloyd assured me "We've all got to get rusty at some point in our lives," I had to disagree with him, not everyone got rusty. I only did because of the break I took from fighting. I'm guessing that he was referring to them mostly, and from listening about them in the news and all of those things, it doesn't sound like they were getting rusty. "We've got a place where we train sometimes where you can do your magic."

"It's actually quite nice, to be honest," Kai pitched in.

"That's good," I smiled as they took me to this place that they were talking about. I was looking forward to fighting them, beating an opponent always gave me a good feeling. I knew that I probably wouldn't be able to beat them all, if any, though. I knew about Lloyd, and their was no way in hell that I could beat him. I wasn't exactly sure about the other four, but I'd sure push past my limits to show them what I could do.

They took me outside to a place that looked as if they did train their a lot. There were various weapons around, along with some training equipment. It was awesome, it makes me jealous! I looked around at the weapons, and saw my signature weapon, a Kusarigama. Walking away from the group, I approached the weapon and smiled "I can't believe you have one of these! I'm totally badass with them," I admitted, trying not to brag. I've never come across many people who have used them as well, so I was willing to bet that they weren't that popular compared to others such as swords and daggers.

"Really? Then we should spar with weapons. I'm great with nunchucks, you see, along with a handful of other weapons, including "Jay started to say, until he was elbowed by Kai. He coughed "Anyways, why don't you spar with us, using hand-to-hand and powers, so we can see what you can do."

"That would be a good idea," I heard from behind me, an unfamiliar voice. I turned my head to see a guy, who appeared to be made out of metal. "Dear god!" I jumped back a little, looking him in the face. "Who are you?"

"I'm Zane, Elemental Master of Ice. And you must be the Elemental Master of Wind, correct?" I stared at him for a little bit longer, until he apologized "I'm sorry if I scared you."

"It's fine," I insisted, while the others chuckled a little. "Um, nice to meet you… Zane."

"Now that you've met Zane, why don't we get to that sparing?" Cole suggested, recovering form a laugh. I kind of laughed to, because the others were laughing, so why now? I knew that it was from my reaction, I would have laughed as well, so I wasn't mad on little bit.

I nodded "Sure, I wouldn't mind, not one bit," We decided that I'd go up against Jay, then Zane, Kai, Cole, and finally Lloyd. I knew that even if I didn't beat them, that I'd have fun doing it. It'd put up one hell of a fight, but I wouldn't try to hurt them. If I was going up against an ally, I wouldn't be as hard on them as I was on my enemies, but I'd still put 110% effort into it.

The others moved back off of the area where people seemed to spar in this place, leaving Jay and I facing each other. We shared a smirk, both obvious confident we'd win. "Good luck," He said, holding out his hand.

I shook it, saying back "Same to you, we'll both will need it," I promised.

We stepped back a few feet, and faces each other again. I looked around, thinking about what I'd do. Now that I had a few seconds before we actually started, I had a little time to think about what I'd do. I took a deep breath before hearing "Okay, go!" Nya yelled, and Jay and I were already at it.

Less than a second after she said go, he already made a move. He held out his hand and a bolt of lightning came flying at me, but I quickly dodged it. "Gonna have to try harder than that!" I taunted him. He turned to me again and ran at me. He attempted to tackle me, but I kept my hands out and grabbed his fists "What are you trying to do?" I questioned him "Tackling me will do you no good."

"All that matters is if I try!" He insisted, when I forced him back a little with a soft gust of wind. Now, three feet apart, we let our elements form around our hands. "Eat this!" He yelled when he let lighting come at me.

A little hit me, sending a shock through my body. I shook my head to snap myself out of the daze the shock left me is, growing "Still, you're gonna have to try harder than that," I got up and made a fist, and ran at him. I managed to punch him in the face, knocking him down.

He stopped himself with his hands and say their on his knees. I stood above him, wind forming around my fist once more. "Okay, now, now I'm mad," he said under his breath as he hit lightning back at me. It hit my wind filled hand, and for some reason, the pain was significantly less than before. I guess that the wind was counteracting his lightning, because I was just standing there and the lighting seemed to be doing nothing to me. I finally took my find and hit him with a big gust of wind, making him stop.

I stopped as well, and stepped back a foot as he sat up. "Do I win or what?"

He slightly nodded, rubbing the back of his head. "Y-Yeah, I guess you wind this round."

I stared at him for a minute. Was that a pun? Yeah, that was pun. One very, verg cheesy pun. I looked over at the others, who were all staring at him too. "okay, bad pun Jay," Cole said what we were all thinking.

"Hey, think it was quite a good pun, if I do say so myself."

"Don't worry Jay, there's plenty other times to strike a good put," I told him, holding out a hand to help him up. When he grabbed it, I pulled him up. "And sorry if I went a little overboard there."

"Nah, it's fine."

"Okay, if you insist," I took a moment to stretch, then turned to Zane and rubbed my hands together "Okay, looks like it's time for us to fight now. Can't wait," this was going to be good, just like the last fight, I knew it.


	6. Chapter Six: Fire and Ice

Chapter Six: Fire and Ice

The few things that have happened so far, have all been interesting to me. I was surprised how Wu was clueless about how my mom was dead, for a while at that. Then the spar with Jay, it was actually very fun, and I didn't even think I'd beat him after not fighting against anyone in a while. I was hoping that the fights got more challenging as they went on. In a normal thing like this, you'd normally see as the rounds went on, it got more challenging. Hopefully it was like that.

"Hey, good luck tin-man," I joked, giving him a thumbs up. I knew that he was a robot at this point, so why not give him that nickname? I thought that it suited him well, because for some reason, he reminded me of the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz.

"I am not made of tin," He insisted, knocking on his metal body, I heard it each like any other metal would sound like if hit but something. "This is Titanium."

"Zane, it was a joke!" Kai yelled to him. I laughed a little before stepping back and get into a fighting position. I was going to aim to not hit him, because he was made of titanium, and there was no doubt in my mind that it would hurt like hell. I was going to just use my powers, when it got to another fight, I'd try to use good old hand-to-hand a little bit. "Okay, ready, set, go!"

Unlike this time, like how Jay went straight to the fighting, Zane stayed in a defensive position. We looked at each other for a second. So, he was going to play it slow for now, I see how it was going to be. I took the moment to make a move on him myself. Without hesitation, and threw a good punch in his direction, causes it huge gust of wind to hit him. He dug his feet into the ground, which stopped him as he went back.

"Damn it," I whispered. Out of no where, a block of ice formed around my feet, leaving me stuck where I was. "Hey, no fair!" I claimed. Yeah, I know all's fair in love and war, but seriously! How does he expect me to fight if I

can't move around?

"It's a fight, anything's fair," he told me. He ran to punch me, but I held out my hands and sent out another gust of wind. It didn't exactly stop him, but it did slow him down. He kept running at me, and I kept letting my wind hit him. His fists ended in my hands, and we stood there, putting force on one another.

I gripped his wrist with two hands and threw him over my shoulders and a good couple yards away from me. I looked around and saw a small rock near a wall. I forced some wind at it, causing it to hit the wall behind it and come flying to me. I grabbed it and knelt down, then started to smash the Ice that was preventing me from moving. "Aha," I finally smashed it all and was free. By that time, Zane was already back up and ready to fight some more. I waved my hands in front of me, saying "Come and get me!"

He formed two Ice spheres in his hands and threw them at me, which I caught. I threw on at him and it hit his face. He fell back and landed on the ground. I raced faster to him with wind around my fists, and stopped at him. I pointed one of my wind willed hands at him, saying "Might as well give up now, Tin-Man," I decided to keep that as his nickname, despite him being made out of titanium.

He put his hands up in surrender as he stood up. "Good fight," He admitted. Yeah, it was a good fight, I had to admit. It was fun like the last on I had with Jay.

"Same to you, now who's next?" I chuckled. I knew that it was Kai, but I couldn't resist saying who's next because of my two wins in a row. I knew that I would beat all of the other three, but I sure was doing a good job for just starting this one-on-one stuff again. Like serious, I didn't think that I'd be this decent.

"Be prepared, I'm quite the fighter," Kai couldn't help but brag.

I laughed "Well, we'll see about that," I was going to see just how powerful he was, and I bet this was going to be a good fight, for some reason. I was fired up and ready to fight, I didn't think about backing down or not giving it my all. I was already through two out of five fights already and I still wanted to show them exactly what I could do.

Once again, I heard GO! and the two of us were already going at each other. It hadn't even been ten seconds and I could tell that he was an aggressive fighter. He threw punches at me every which way, but I blocked most of them. A few managed to hit me, but they weren't anything I couldn't handle. "Come on, you can give me more than that!" Kai yelled at me, trying to pump me up even more.

"I was just getting to that!" I just yelled back. He punched fire at me, but I ducked, and kicked some wind at him, tripping him. He fell onto his stomach, face first. He shook his head and looked back up at me. Like a few seconds before he punched some fire at me. This time it hit me in the leg and started to burn my pants. "Hey! Ow!" I looked down and put it out, before looking back up to Kai jumping at me.

We rolled a few feet until he ended up on top of me. Damn it, what's up with me getting tackles by people so much today?! First it was when I was fighting the Snakes, then with Jay, and now Kai? I tried to get him off of me with wind, but he was restraining my wrists next to my head. I couldn't use my legs to kick him off with me, which made things suck even more. "Okay, okay, you win. Just get off of me, would you?" I questioned.

"Yeah, no problem," he said as he got up, before I did. The Jay gave him a thumbs up before Kai turned to me. "Hey, nice try, not bad, if I do say so myself."

"Thanks."

Cole walked up to us, and started to push Kai away and out of the way. "So," he began "We've seen you with your powers, why don't we try

fighting with weapons?"

"Yeah!" I smiled, now that would be great! I loved fighting with weapons, especially my favorite weapon, a Kusarigama. From what I could tell, I was one of the best with them. It mostly had to do because not a lot of people used them, but it did say something that I was really good with them. "Let's get to it then."

"Alright," he went and grabbed a scythe from a weapons rack while I grabbed a Kusarigama. I felt the grip on it before walking back over to the others. "Just to warn you, I'm really good with a Scythe, and I won't be holding back. This is suppose to be a challenge to you, it a challenge it's going to be.

"Same to you, I wouldn't be holding back either. And I'm not that bad with these," I held up the weapon in my hands, and smirked "Watch out, I'm badass with these."

"Well, we'll see." We stood so we were looking at each other, and we both got out weapons ready. I was really ready for this, and I was sure that he was too. I observed him and his stance, and he was well balanced. I could tell that he's been using them for quite some time, because he had a nearly perfect grip on the handle. Now this, was going to be a good fight. Things would get interesting, when we heard Go, and we both showed no hesitation to attack. Before I knew it, I was hearing the clashing of our blades.


	7. Chapter Seven: Giving it All I

Chapter Seven: Giving it All I've Got

When he went to strike me with his scythe, the blade of one of my kusarigama blocked the attack. With the blades still touching, I swung the free blade I had at him, but he brought his scythe handle down and blocked my attack. Damn, he's pretty good with a scythe, I have to admit. "You are pretty good with a scythe," I told him and tried to hit him with the other blade again.

And like before, he blocked it with the scythe blade "You're pretty good with those Kusarigama yourself," I know, I can't help but be. It's another one of those things that I trained with my dad for, he was an expert in them as well. He stepped back a few feet, leaving me with the opportunity to make a move against him. I swung the Kusarigama back, keeping a tight grip on the chain, and whipped it forward.

The Chain wrapped around his scythe's handle, so I pulled it away from him and out of his grasp. I grabbed it and held it in my hand "looks like you don't have a weapon," I grinned. That didn't mean he couldn't fight, I still needed to keep my guard up.

We shared a small glare, and then he created a sand cloud around us. "Not for long!" Damn it, I thought we weren't using our powers in this fight! Now when I think about it, no one ever said we couldn't. I looked around, trying to see him if I could. Nope, the sand was practically blinding me at the moment. I felt the scythe being ripped from my hands, and I punched a little bit of wind in their direction.

Some of the sand started to clear and I got an idea "Aha," even bigger than the last one, I created a huge gust of wind that cleared away every last bit of sand in the air. I saw him running at me again, trying to jump at be, but I ducked. I turned to him rolling on the ground and stand up. Again, we faced each other. "You might as well surrender now, before I go all out."

"In your dreams," he claimed, and swung his scythe at me. Somehow, the chain of my Kusarigama managed to to tangle around the shiny blade of the Scythe. I tried to pull it away, but the chain wouldn't budge. He pulled his scythe back and pulled my weapon along with it. Great, just my luck!

I jumped back away from him, now weaponless "Damn it," I whispered under my breath. I got a quick glance at the others, who all seemed immensely anxious to see who'd win, basically at the edge of their seats. I was going to try to be the victor here, but at this rate, I couldn't ensure that. "Come on Cass, you've got this" I thought to myself. I've been in situations similar to this before, many times. I've fought guys with weapons when I've been weaponless, only to be aided by my elemental powers and good old fashion hand-to-hand combat. "You're not going to lose," I thought to myself again "There's not chance in hell you will."

I looked back over at Cole and his Scythe, just waiting for him to try to strike me with its blade. He finally did so, and swung at me with great force. I jumped away and held out my hands to stop myself. I turned around, and without thinking, I punched wind in the direction where he should have been. For some reason, that I couldn't exactly figure out, he wasn't there. Where'd he go in the short amount of time I hadn't kept my eyes on him? From behind me, I felt a change in the air, it was getting a little tense. I turned around and saw what I knew what I would, it was Cole with his Scythe pointed at me. "Ready to give up yet, Wind Girl?"

I shook my head. "Never," I tried grabbing the Scythe's handle to pull it away from him, but I grabbed the blade instead. A slight pain shot through my hand as the blade sliced through my palm. "Damn it," I pulled my hand back and held my wrist. It wasn't that bad, it wasn't anything compared to some things I've experienced in the past.

Cole looked down at the wound and put his scythe down "Sorry, I didn't mean to do that," He insisted.

I stood up, saying "It's fine," It really was, I didn't see why he was apologizing for. It wasn't his fault, and it wasn't anything to worry about. It's just a small cut, no biggie. I examined the cut for a second, which wasn't bleeding that much. I looked back up at him "Going to take it you want to stop the fight, now?" I could keep going if he wanted to, because I've continued to fight in the middle of battle and things worse than this. It was going to be his choice, since he was the one that technically challenged me in the first place.

"Sure, I guess," Okay, so he did want to stop. That was his choice and I was going to respect it.

"You win," I told him. It was a pretty fair fight, and he deserved to win. The way I saw it, he put up a better fight than me, and I was willing to admit defeat. He showed honor in the fight, and honor deserved to win, so he did. With the cutlass hand, I pointed at him "Don't say that it was a tie, because it wasn't You one fair and square," I still thought that he did.

"Okay, okay, If you insist. I wasn't going to say anything at first, but if you say so, I'm the winner," It was good that he didn't try to argue with me, either saying No, it was a tie or I say you win. I highly doubt that he'd say the second one, because he obviously won this round. Next time, it was going to be different for sure.

"Nice fight guys," I heard Nya say with a roll of bandages in hand. "It was a close one, I'll give you that," Yeah, we all have to admit, it was a close one like she had said.

She handed me the roll "Thanks," I flashed a smile. It was nice of her to give me some, but I didn't think I'd need them. She offered them to me, trying to be nice, so I wouldn't turn down the offer. I unraveled a good foot of the bandages and started to wrap it around the wound. It was actually a good thing that I decided to accept the offered bandages, because it would prevent infection spreading through the wound, and that's something I didn't want to deal with. No one wanted to deal with infection for that matter. If it got bad enough, like with any other infection, the hand would end up getting amputated and that's something else that no one else wanted to deal with.

"No problem."

"We've seen how you fight, and I have to say, it was pretty good," we heard Lloyd say as he walked to us. "And I don't think that you need to fight me, we've seen enough."

Damn it, I was looking forward to fighting him. I knew about him, and about how powerful he was. For sure, he would put up a great fight, and I could never turn down one of those. I sighed, but agreed "Okay, if you say so," when there was enough bandage around my hand, I ripped the end with my teeth and threw the roll back to Nya. "Too bad, though. I would have liked to fight you and see exactly how strong you are."

He laughed, and said "Some other time."

Like Lloyd had, Wu walked up to us, and scratched his long white beard "It was a good fight. You fight like your mother, focusing more on elemental powers, rather than actual hand to hand," That sounded like how my mother fought, but with me, that wasn't 100 percent true.

I scratched the back of my neck, telling him "Um, actually, that's not the way I fight all the time. I mean, that's my style, I just didn't use as much hand-to-hand as I normally use," now that I thought about it, they didn't see much of my hand to hand, but more of my elemental powers. "You know what, when I fight Lloyd, whenever that is, no powers, just combat.

"I'd like to see that," Kai pitched in "I want to see how Lloyd deals with her with just using combat."

"Same!" Jay agreed. Three people, those two and myself, agree to wanting to see that fight, so I was going to make sure that it happened. I was going to fight him, and it was going to happen without any powers. I knew that he'd still be good at it, because you had to balance your combat skills with the strength of your elemental powers. The way that I see it, as you grow in combat skills, your powers grow as well. If you don't improve how well you can fight hand-to-hand, you can't improve your elemental powers.

"Okay, okay," Lloyd put his hands up in defense "I'll do it," now, he turned to me "We can do it some other time, though."

"That's fine," I nodded. As long as he didn't back out, I didn't care when it would happen. All that mattered is that we got to fight, and I could see how powerful he really was. I wanted to see his powers for myself, because people are always saying how great they are, and I need to see it to believe it (Yeah, I'm one of those people).

Wu coughed to get our attention, and we all looked in his direction. "Now that we've seen what you can do, I'd like to see what you can do, Cass," He told us. That was what I was waiting for. I knew that he'd end up wanting to talk to me. After all, he did know my mom, and I was the second generation Elemental Master of Wind. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from this talk, but I knew that it would be interesting. Maybe I could ask him a few things about my mom, even about how she met my dad? He knew about that stuff, right? My dad never told me about that stuff, for some reason I still can't figure out. He only told me we met when she was in Jamanakai village on day. What was that day like? What made them want to know each other? That was something that I was yet to find out.

"Okay," I spoke up. Now, he was guiding me to another room, away from the others, to talk to me. All that was left to find out, was about what.


	8. ChapterEight Here's Where It All Changes

Chapter Eight: And Here's Where It All Changes

We entered a small room that appeared to be used for meditation, or something along the lines of that. I could tell from the Cinnamon smelling incense in the room. Boy, I love that smell of Cinnamon. "Smells nice," I admitted. It one of the only things I shared with my mom, the love of cinnamon and the smell of it.

Wu closed the door behind him, then turned to me "Thank you, picked it out myself," He walked over to a small table, and pulled out a teapot and a few cups. "Would you like some tea? It's nice and fresh," Wait, how could he have fresh tea? Had he been in here earlier to cook it? No, that couldn't be possible, could it? I've heard about him and his love for tea, so I wouldn't be surprised, to be honest. Before I could give an answer, he had already poured a couple of cups of tea.

"Um, sure," I was going to say yes anyways, but he had already poured the cup.. You would think that he'd wait for me to respond, but that didn't seem to be the case here. He walked over to me, and handed me a cup before sitting down. Right away, he took a sip of his tea. I looked around, awkwardly, not sure if I should sit down or not. I sat anyways. because he had sat down, and why would he sit and not let me? "So, what did you want to talk to me about?" I questioned him.

He brought the cup away from his mouth, and told me "I wanted to talk about your powers," Okay, I was expecting that much, but what about my powers did he want to talk about? There was quite a bit to talk about, so I wasn't sure where he was going with things at this point. "You're just as good with it as your mother was in her fighting days."

I smiled "Thanks," it was nice to know that, I wanted to be like that, to match my moms skills when it came to my elemental abilities. I was basically carrying on her legacy, and I wanted to honor it and keep it up to it's name. "What exactly about them did you want to talk about?" I waited for an answer, and hoped I'd get a good one.

He took another sip of his tea "Tell me, who taught you to use them, if your mom wasn't around to teach you?" Yep, that was a question that I could see coming. That was the first question people have asked me once they knew about my mom and my powers. "Was it your father?"

I nodded "Yeah, he was," I told him. My mom showed him how she could use her powers, and he showed me what he learned from her. Even though he could never actually do anything, I picked up everything that he'd show me. And the things he didn't show me, I learned on my own. Most of it was after he died, but I still managed to learn a good handful of things on my own. "He taught me a lot of stuff, and I'm grateful for that."

"I can see why you are, he learned some pretty useful things from your mother. Your mother wasn't able to pass down her knowledge to you, but your father was. It's good that you were able to learn some things. You've still got more to learn, though."

I raised an eyebrow. "Huh? What do you mean still got more to learn? I know that I do, but why are you saying that?" I was a little confused why he'd say that. I was aware of it, but where was he to say that? He wasn't training me or anything like he was with the others. If he was, then he could say that, but not in this case. Even if I was, how could he help me? I started to wonder what exactly he knew about my powers, he knew my mom after all.

He finally put down his cup of tea, which I noticed was empty. He looked up from his cup and over at me. "Every one of the Elemental Masters has much to learn, including you," I knew that, but my question wasn't answered. Where was he going with this? "I still haven't seen any close to meeting the level that the first Masters were at," he paused, but continued "Now tell me, what are you going to do to train?"

"Um," I started. I didn't even get that far, so an answer was absent from my mind. I didn't even know what to think about it, to be honest. "I'm just going to practice my moves, strengthen my powers, along with improve my combat and weapon skills."

"I see," he interrupted me. "That's where a mistake is present." What? How the hell could there be a mistake in the way I wanted to train. That's how I've been doing it this whole time, it's proven to work and I didn't want to change it.

If he was going to go and tell me that I was wrong, then he could, but I wasn't going to let it get to me. I learned not to let people criticize what you do or to let it mess with you. As my dad always told me Only you can chose how you live life, and only you know what you're suppose to do. He never explained to me what it meant, He just told me that once, and never talked about it again. "I know you're trying to be helpful, but I don't agree with that. I've been doing this for a long time, and I think it's working. It's how I train, not everyone has to do it the same."

"I don't mean it doesn't work for you, I think that you've done a fine job training, but there's something that you're missing," He commented. Now I was calming down from getting a little pissed at my training style being criticized. I started to understand that he didn't see a flaw in it per say, but he sees that something is needed. That's a whole different story, I'm not doing things wrong, but something could possibly help me improve. Well, that's what I was seeing things turning out to be at the moment. "You can only get stronger with the aid of others, no one can do it alone."

"Okay, where are you going with this? Who could ever help me with training?" I questioned him. I knew that that could always help, but I didn't have anyone in my life that could help me like my dad did when he was still around. My sister was out because she was never into fighting like i was. And no one else that I knew even know about my powers, so that's out as well. What other options did I have? Even if there was any, I was oblivious to them all, because I couldn't think of anything. "I mean, if you tell me, I'd be open up to the idea of it."

"You know that I've taught and trained the ninja for the past two years, am I right?" He asked me. Of course I do, who doesn't know that? They've been on the news a lot, and being an elemental, it's really hard to miss it. I've hear about them all, especially him. He's even been interviewed once or twice, and has told them that he trained them, he was even proud of it. I'd be proud if I was him, he's trained them well, no doubt about it.

I nodded in confirmation "Yeah," I understood that he did, but what did it have to do with me and my training? If there was a way, I couldn't see it. I thought for a moment about what he could possibly mean, but my mind was still blank. "But, uh, what does it have to do with me and training? I don't see how," I admitted, hoping that he'd just give me an answer already.

Things grew silent for a second, but he finally broke it with "I think that it would help you if you let me train you," I let his words sink in, and it took a few moments for me to realize what he was getting at. Why would he ask me to do that, let him train me? I wasn't against it or anything, but where did he get this idea from? "It would be good for you, I know it will. You're a lot like your mother, and she always showed the most progress when she was working with others."

"Really?" I asked, and got a nod from him. I didn't say anything at first, because I started to wonder if he was right. Could it really help me, for him to help me? "I actually think that's a good idea, but I'm not sure. You've got the others to worry about, and you shouldn't have to deal with someone else. Heck, what would even happen? Would I come here to train or would you come to my house?" dozens of questions started to race through my mind, all with answers that were still left to be answered. I wasn't exactly sure how things would play out, I just hoped that it would all work out.

"I'd have you come here to train, there's everything you could possibly need to train here," He told me. It was true, they had just about any weapon you could think of, and the training area was nice. "I'm not exactly sure how the others would feel about it, but you can train with them. As well as training with others, training with fellow Elemental Masters is great. It's easy to make connections and should be easier."

"That would be nice," I admitted. It actually would be, I could see it really helping me, if what he was true. But what would the others think? Yeah, we were all elementals, but that didn't necessarily meant that they'd agree to it. There was no guarantee that they'd be open up to letting me train with them, so how would things end? "But would they be open up to it? I don't want to come in and not be accepted by them. I'd feel bad for intruding on their territory, their training place, if I wasn't."

He got up, and walked back over to the table with his teapot, and put his cup back down. His back facing me, he said "They might need to get used to it, but I know that they will grow to accept you, I promise you that," I hoped that he was right, because I didn't want to be in the middle of the five, training, and not be accepted by them. He turned to me again, and continued "They were a little on edge about working with each other at first, but look at them now. They're a well bonded team that has grown into a family."

Before he could finish, I interrupted "Yeah, but this is different. They've been doing this for a few years, and I'm just getting here now. If I all of a sudden join in on their training, I'll be the odd one out. Like you just said: They're a well bonded team that has grown into a family. That means they're all in good with each other, while they don't even know me. How do I know that they'll actually take me in as one one their own, whether it be very soon, or a long time from now?" I'm not sure if he was seeing it, but if they were as close as he was making them to be, then it wouldn't be as easy to bond with them as they could at the formation of their team.

"I know that they will," he stopped me, making me raise an eyebrow once again "Lloyd wasn't originally on the team, he started out as their enemy, believe it or not. Then he joined them, and they didn't have that hard of a time taking them in as one of their own. It took a couple months, but they finally cracked. That was when they were still bonding. Think about it now, they're even more close than they were then, so maybe they'll take you in faster than they did with him."

I knew about that whole fiasco, Lloyd used to be on the dark side, I know from his few useless raids of jamanakai Village that my sister had told be about. Then he joined with them and hadn't done anything since. Now they're all friends, and the well bonded team that they were. Maybe he was right, but that didn't mean that I didn't still have nots in my stomach about the situation. "I'll take your word for it, Wu. And I'll take you up on your offer, so no arguments about it. It'll be an honor to train under someone who's fought by my mom's side."

"That's good to know," Wu said as I handed him my tea cup. I watched him out the set away, and turned to me and smiled "I've already thought of a good way to start your training. I picked up on how a wind elemental should train from your mother, some things I think would help you a lot."

As we started back for the others, I smiled "that's good. I can't wait to see what you have in mind." So far, things were looking okay for me, and I was happy about that.


	9. Chapter Nine: There's No I In Team

Chapter Nine: There's No "I" In Team

I wasn't exactly sure how, but I knew things were going to change. At this point I was going to enter the life of an elemental again, fighting for the greater good like before. I wasn't going to get out of it, because they always say: There's no going back. I believed that so I wasn't even thinking about it, I didn't even want to. "I really appreciate this," I admitted to Wu as we continued walking, and added "I mean it. You offered to help me, and I couldn't thank you enough for that, trust me."

"No need to thank me, I thought that it could help you. Plus, I did tell your mother that I owed her after she saved me once. So this is how I plan on repaying her, by helping you," once he brought it up, I wondered what he meant by 'after she saved me'. I never knew that she saved someone, let alone Wu. "I would have done it even if I didn't. She was a close friend, and it is good that I'm able to aid her daughter."

I smiled "That's good to know," it was, and it was interesting to know that he once helped my mother. I never really learned about who my mother had known and fought beside, it was exciting to actually get to meet one. I wasn't sure who else was among those people, but knowing of one them was good enough. They were someone I could trust, if my mother. "Sounds like the two of you were friends. What about the other's descendants? You had to have known them too, right?" I questioned. It only made sense that he did because they all fought in the fight against the Anacondrai.

He nodded "Some of them, yes. I knew the ones of Kai, Cole, and Lloyd. We were all great friends, I'll tell you that," it always amazed me to learn about past Elemental Masters. It was hard to believe how long ago that was, and to think, this generation of masters has been around for a while, some more than others. I didn't know anything about ones before them, since I've never known anyone who did that could tell me. There had to be some, thought, it couldn't just start with the previous ones. He added "Just as good of friends as they are now."

"I would like to have a friendship with some of the other Elemental Masters like they do, or you did with some back in the day," I bet that it would be fun to befriend some of them, it would just mean that I'd have some people to train with. The spars I had with the others was really fun, I hadn't had felt a rush in battle like that in a long time. Going up against a fellow Master sure proved to be a challenge compared to a fight with a non-elemental.

"Well," he stopped and turned to me "If you get along with them, I think that you can gain friendships like they share with each other."

"That would be nice."

We finally made it back to the guys and Nya, who were all back at the training place we all sparred at. I saw them training themselves, Kai with Zane, Cole with Jay, while Nya and Lloyd were training alone. "I've got something to tell you all," Wu spoke up, getting their attentions. As Jay turned to look at him, he got hit with a rock that Cole had kicked in his direction. I couldn't help but laugh a little at the cry he made, it sounded like those cat noises in movies as if it was getting his with something, which never ceased to get a laugh out of me.

"What is it, Sensei?" Kai wondered what the others probably were as well.

"I've been talking with Cass," Wu told them, gesturing to me. For some reason, I started to get nervous as to what they were going to think about what he was about to tell them. It was certainly a big change for everyone, but were they willing to work around the change? "I know that the team has been thinking about getting a new addition, but never came around to it after the tournament. I put some thought into it, and I think that it would be best if she joins for a bit, if not permanently."

"What?" We all were shocked. I had just talked to him, but he never brought anything up about it, all I knew was that I was going to train with them for a little while. Joining their team, that was a whole different story. Where did he even get the idea from anyways? I was pretty sure that they wouldn't be as open to that idea as they would to the other one, if they were at all. I was even more doubting that they'd agree to that then they would then with me just training with them.

They all looked at me, but then back to Wu. "What makes you think that?" Zane questioned him, basically taking the words about that out out of my mouth. If he hadn't asked him it first, I would have done it myself. I really wanted to know why he thought that, just as much as the others were probably wanting at the moment.

"Like I said, you guys were thinking about adding someone to the team, and I think she is just what you guys need," whoa, he really thinks that I'm what they need? And exactly how is that? "From what I can tell, she's a lot like her mom, and I know that she will work well with the five of you, and you with her."

"Plus, she's the only one with a main element," Jay claimed. He wasn't wrong about the main element part, but that didn't mean was a reason for me joining their team. I mean, the other elementals were just as good as me when it came to powers, so there wasn't exactly a difference there.

Wu coughed. "Anyways, I'm not going to force it, it's up to the six of you. If all of you are okay with it, then it will happen."

We all shared looks, until Kai pitched in. "I actually think it's a great idea. We have been talking about adding someone to the team, so why not her? Seeing her fighting, I think she's be great. She'd be a good addition to the team."

"I do have to admit, I think it'd be great too," Jay nodded in agreement, same with Zane.

"Yeah, I agree too. It wouldn't hurt, so why not?" Lloyd said as well.

"As the leader, I think that it's a good idea too. Like Kai said, we've been talking about adding someone to the team, and she is a good fighter," He turned to me "All that's left is for you to agree, then you'll be an official member of the team."

I looked at them, a little glad that they were cool with it. I still thought that they wouldn't, but they were, the complete opposite of what I was thinking. "Uh," I started, not sure what to say. "Why not? There's no harm in it, and I wouldn't mind. Honestly, I think it'd be pretty cool," I smiled, creating a small gust of wind in my hand "Say hi to: Cass, the Ninja of Wind!" They others laughed a little as I let the wind die down.

Jay gave me a pat on the back "Nice to have ya, Wind Ninja," he joked as well. I felt better to know that they were all accepting of me at first, and didn't reject me. "Let me warn ya, you're in some for some crazy if you're gonna train with us," he laughed.

Zane nodded "I second that."

I couldn't help but laugh a little myself. "Can't wait to see what it has in store," I admitted, I really couldn't. I had only been there for about an hour, and things have already gotten crazy. I could tell that things would only get better, and maybe I've gained some new friends. Who am I kidding, of course I have, there was no doubting it. "And on my end, things can get pretty crazy as well."

"We'll see," kai spoke up. Oh boy, they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Like I've said, when I want to, I can be pretty powerful. When I was sparring with them, I wasn't exactly giving it all that I got because I didn't want to hurt them. But now that we were all chill, I wouldn't feel as bad about going all out on them. "Anyways, if you're gonna be a part of the team and train with us, you're really going to have to commit to it."

"That wouldn't be a problem."

"That includes coming here full time and everything," Lloyd informed me.

It took a second to process what he had said until it made sense. They expected me to stay there and everything, as in leave my sister back in Jamanakai Village. "Oh," I scratched the back of my neck, I should have seen that coming. God, what was she going to think about all of of this? I completely forgot about her and that she would have an opinion about all of this. She'd probably tell me not to do it and stay with her, I would say the same thing if were her. But I need to do this, I want to do it. I cleared my throat, and told them "That's fine, if it means I get to train with you guys."

Cole cracked a half smile "That's great. You still need to get stuff from you house, right? One of us can bring you to get it."

"Why don't you do it, Cole? You were the first one that met her, so why don't you?" Kai suggested.

"Sure, why not?" Cole agreed. How did they expect to get me back to my house, unless we walked like I did to get there? It wouldn't make a difference if someone came with me, but I nodded in agreement to their plan because they offered. I couldn't turn them down on their offer. "Come on," he said as he started to walk away.

I looked at the others before jogging to catch up to him. "So, how we gonna get to my place?" I questioned.

"You'll see," he told me.

I raised an eyebrow at him "Okay then," we walked outside to the monastery's courtyard. Was he seriously expecting us to walk? I looked over at him to see what he was planning on doing, and froze when he summoned a dragon. I jumped back a little, startled "Whoa, what is that?" I stept forward and got a better look at it. It was brown and it's skin seemed to resemble earth. Why did it look like his element?

He looked down at me from the things neck, or back, I couldn't really tell from down on the ground. "It's my elemental dragon," he told me. Elemental Dragon? Okay, so there were things that I didn't know, and that was something I wanted to learn. "You coming or what?"

"Oh," I snapped out of my quick moment of being lost in my thoughts (being jealous of the dragon) and looked up at him. "Yeah," I jumped up onto the Dragon's back and grabbed onto the closest thing I could find to hold on to. "If I fall, it's your fault," I joked.

Cole laughed a little. "Don't worry, you're not gonna fall," Before I knew it, we were already on the way back to my house, in Jamanakai Village.


	10. Chapter Ten: The Truth Revealed

Chapter Ten: The Truth Revealed

I smiled as I felt the wind blow through my hair. "Ah, it's nice when wind blows through your hair, ain't it?" I joked a little, while still trying to be serious. It's probably because I was the wind elemental, and from my understanding, Elementals have interests affiliated to their element. One of mine is that I enjoy a nice cold breeze, the colder the better. "With that long hair of yours, you must like it," I chuckled.

"Hey," Cole tried defending himself,"Just because I have hair like this, doesn't mean I like it," we shared a short stare, then he laughed a little as well "Who am I kidding, it's pretty nice," I haven't seen many guys who could pull off long hair like his, but for some reason he could. There was Lloyd who had long hair, but it was nothing compare to his long hair. I had to admit, it was some awesome hair. "So, I'm wondering, what do you think about all of this?"

"Hm?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, about joining the team?"

"Ah," I still wasn't exactly sure how I should have felt, you could say I was having mixed feelings about it. I was surprised that it came to that. I was excited, too. And I was happy that it happened as well. It was a change that I knew would benefit me, and wasn't that bad. "It's gonna take some time to get used to, but it shouldn't be that bad. I feel like it's going to be fun, actually. From what I can tell, you guys are crazy, and I love crazy," I admitted. "I'm just going to add onto it."

"You have no idea what kind of crazy we have going on back at the monastery, but you seem like you can handle it," he was right, I could handle it, or I at least hoped. I grew up being friends with a crazy group of kids back in Jamanakai Village, so it shouldn't have been a problem. I watched as the village come into view, and heard Cole add "I don't know where your place is, so you're gonna have to show me,"

He landed right on the edge of the Village, and the both of us jumped off the dragon before he let it vanish. "Okay, I'm not going to take that long. Just gotta get some things and explain things to my sister," I told him as I rubbed the back of my neck. I was still a little nervous about how she would take things, for all I knew she'd tell me I couldn't go. I cared about her so much, but I couldn't let her stop me from going. "You can wait outside, or in my living room if you want."

"I'll take your living room," we walked towards my house, and for some reason I dreaded each step that I took. It was one step closer to facing my sister and being forced to tell her the news. I knew that I was overthinking the situation, but I couldn't help it, there was no way in hell that it would go smoothly. We stopped at my house, and Cole got a good look at it. "Nice place."

"Thanks. It's technically not mine, it's my sister's house," I told him. She was the one who originally bought it, she just let me stay with her, mostly because it was the only way I could live near her. I opened the door, and once I got inside I yelled "Amanda, I'm home!"

I heard her jogging down the stairs. I saw her turn around the corner from the hallway, as she started to say "I'm glad you're home, it's getting late and I wasn't sure where you were-" She stopped when she saw me with Cole, and just continued to stare at him. "Oh, I didn't know that you were going to bring someone back with you."

I scratched the back of my neck "I know, neither did I. This is Cole, one of the Ninja, the one that helped me earlier, actually," I gestured to him, who waved a little. I wasn't sure what to say there, things just seemed to awkward at the moment, to me at least. "I've actually got something to tell you. I'm not sure how you're going to react about it, so could we talk in another room, just the two of you?" She nodded, and started for the room next to the living room. I turned my head so that I could see Cole behind me "You can just chill here for a bit. If you hear any yelling, which you might, just stay here."

I didn't wait for a response, and instead walked to the room my sister went to. "So, what do you want to talk about? It it about what happened while you were gone?"

"Yeah, kind of," I ran a finger through my hair, prepared to finally ready to come clean about it. I saw her expression, which was a mix of concern and curiosity. I could tell that she was wanted to know what I was about to spill, and possibly worried about what it was. "I know that you're not going to like this, but I'm leaving."

Her eyes widened "Wait, what?" I was just waiting for her to give me a long talk about why I should go, and how she wouldn't let me. I bet that she'd say You're not going, I'm not going to let you. I could feel bad for leaving her, but I already made the decision to, and I wouldn't even let her change that. "Why?"

I sighed "They asked me to join their team and train with them. I know that you probably don't want me to do that, but I agreed. I just think that it's best for me. You know how I've been wanting to start fighting again, and this is my chance, the opportunity I've been needing. Please, don't get mad at me. I know you probably don't want me to, and are going to try to convince me not to go, just don't-"

Out of no where, she pulled me into a hug. "You know what? I want you to go," I stood there dumbfounded as she had her arms wrapped around me. Did I just hear her right? That she wanted me to go? That wasn't how I thought she would react, it's a lot better than I thought that she would. She pulled away, and added "I know that you're my baby sister, and that I should be watching out for you, but I want what's best for you. If you think that this is the right thing to do, then it is."

I smiled "Thanks Amanda, I'm serious," I personally thought that the conversation about this would be a lot longer than it really was, but I guess that I was wrong. It was quick and simple, not long and complicated like I had predicted it would. I was just happy that she agreed and didn't argue about it with me, it made me feel better. "I appreciate it."

"No problem, Cass," She returned the smile. She gave me a pat on the back "Just one thing: I want you to try your ass off, don't push yourself past your limit, and have fun. Oh, and call me everyday, don't forget."

I laughed. "Don't worry Amanda, I won't forget," I assured her. I began to push her out of my room so I could get my things ready, "Now get out, go talk to Cole for a couple of minutes."

"Okay, okay." She walked out into the hall, and got one last look at me before walking back to the living room, leaving me alone.

I looked around my room, wondering what I would end up bringing. I had quite a bit of stuff in my room, and sadly I couldn't take it all. I reached under my bed and grabbed my two bags which I knew could hold everything I needed. It was a decent size, and I would have no problem fitting everything in them. The first things I grabbed were clothes. Clothes were those things that I didn't have a lot of, I just did a lot of laundry. Seven pairs of shirts, and eight of pants was all that I had, other than the other basic things. I only had three pairs of short, which I grabbed too. I stuffed my black pair of converse in the bag as well. Luckily I was wearing my boots, because they would be a pain trying to fit in the bag.

All of my clothes filled one of the bags, which left me with a smaller bag to put all of my personal belonging into. The first thing that I took, which there was no way I'd leave behind, was my sketchbooks. I had three of them which were all filled with drawings of mine. Something that not a lot of people knew was that I loved to draw, since I rarely showed anyone them (Besides my sister). Then it was my phone and the charged, there was no way I'd leave that behind. I also put in a couple of pictured. One of my sister and me. Another one was of our dad, her, and myself when she was twelve and I was seven. The last, was the only picture of my mom when she was still around. I ground at the picture before I quickly put it in my bag, not wanting to look at it at the moment.

I looked around again, seeing if I forgot anything. I was about to confirm that I got everything, but then I remembered something. I pulled a box out from underneath and smiled when I opened it. They others had really awesome Ninja Gi, so why couldn't I have anything? From back when I actually fought, I would always wear something that reminded me of my mom. She wore something similar to it, so it was special to me. She'd wear something purple when she was around and fighting, so I've adapted to wearing it too.

When I decided that I all that I needed, I started back for the livingroom. "Hey, I'm ready to go," I told Cole and Amanda. I knew that I'd miss living in Jamanakai Village, but I was just about to start living at a monastery. How is that not awesome? The two stood up, and I didn't hesitate to pull my sister into a hug. "Bye," I knew that I was going to miss her, but I'd still end up calling her almost every day. It was hard to leave because I just came back a couple of years prior, and I was leaving again. In this case, I was feeling a bit guilty about it.

She hugged me back. "Yeah, bye. I'll miss you," She told me before we both pulled away. I flashed one last smile to her. "Have fun," She finished. I could definitely promise her that I would have fun, I was already planning on it anyways. I wouldn't go if I wasn't going to try to have fun, no way in hell I would. "Well, it's getting pretty late, you should start heading back if you want to make it before dark."

I glanced at the clock on the side table and realized how late it was. It was already seven and it normally started getting dark around eight. It would probably take an hour or so to get back, so there was a chance that we could get back before then. "Yeah," I nodded before turning to Cole. "Let's get this show on the road," I adjusted the strap on one of my bags, that was slung around my shoulder, and started to walk outside.

When he was outside as well, Cole created his dragon again. Like before, I jumped on it's back and grabbed onto something that I could use to stay on the thing. I had my bags around my shoulders, so I didn't need to worry about them falling off or anything like that. Before I knew it, he flew off, and said. "It'll be interesting to see how things go in the next couple of days, like with having you training with us from now on. Oh, just so you know, you're gonna start tomorrow since you're officially part of the team. We train everyday, besides sundays, for at least five hours. We get up pretty early, just so you know."

I sighed. "I'm fine with the whole training everyday thing, it's just getting up really early. Define what you call early," I would hate that because I've alway been a person to sleep in, into at least eight. I could handle seven if I had to, but anything before seven, maybe six, would be out of the question. They'd either need to train without me until I got up or they'd need to drag me out of bed, literally.

"I mean six, no later than that," like I was dreading, they got up before six. It was going to suck, but I'd push myself to at least try it, it's the least I could do after they let me train with them. I was going to prove to them that I could handle anything that they threw at me, other than anything bug related, which was my biggest fear. I was terrified of them and if any of them even tried to get one close to me, they're going to get kicked.

"I guess that's fine," I told him, before adding "Just so you know, I'm really jealous of your dragon. I'm gonna have to learn this sometime, like, soon," I rubbed the back of the dragon, wishing that I'd known about that. It would be great if I knew how to use a so called elemental dragon because I'd love to fly. Like said before, I love the wind, and what's a better way of embracing it when flying?

He laughed. "Don't worry, it'll be one of the first things you learn," he informed me. It was good that it was going to be one of the things that I would end up learning, because I was getting excited for it, and I barely knew anything about that. I'd train so damn hard for it, and once I knew how to summon one, I'd fly everyday. We started to talk about things, mostly about what I should've expected in the next few days, as he started to fly the dragon faster. From what I heard, it'd be crazy for those days.


	11. Chapter Eleven: Well Now You Know

Chapter Eleven: Well Now You Know

Like I expected, we got back to the monastery around six-thirty, as the sun was just going down. We jumped off before Cole let the dragon vanish like it had before. I looked at the monastery, which looked completely different than it had when it was light out the first time I'd been there. "This place looks cool at night," I admitted, starting for the front door, following Cole. "So, where am I going to end up staying?"

"You've got two choices: You can either room with Nya, or you can have your own room. Which one will it be?" he questioned me. It was a hard decision. I had the two options, room with someone or be by myself. I thought that it would be nice to get to know her, the only other girl around her. On the other end, I could have as much privacy as I wanted to have.

I moved my hands up and down, imagining myself literally weighing my options. "You know what," I put down one of my arms, knowing which one I wanted to choose "I'll room with Nya. It wouldn't hurt, and as long as she agrees, it's fine," I didn't want to room with her unless she agreed to me rooming with her.

"It'll be fine, she's been talking about wanting another girl around anyways, so I doubt she'll refuse it," he took me to her room, which could soon turn into both of our room. He knocked, and we heard some ruckus from the other side of the door. A few seconds later, she opened the door "Hey Nya."

"Oh, hey Cole. I see that you two are back. What's up?" She asked him. I was going to take it that she didn't expect him to come to her door or something. She moved back and gestured us to come in, which we did.

I looked around and saw two beds, one already occupied. It looked like it was meant to be some kind of dorm, or something along the lines of that. There was a desk, some drawers, and then the two beds with some nightstands, just the usual. Not to mention a bathroom, which I could see through a door on the opposite wall. "Uh, Cole said that I could room with you."

She turned to him and raised an eyebrow "He did?" She looked like she wasn't aware of it, which I couldn't blame. It didn't look like they had any time in between the time we all found out about me joining the team and how. She got a slight nod from him, which caused her to sigh. "I guess you can, I don't see why not. I'd be happy to have you as a roommate."

"See, I told you that she'd be fine with it," Cole tried before she started to push him out the door. Before he was fully out of the room, he said "Have fun," she finally managed to push him out of the room completely and slammed the door in his face. We stood there for a moment, realizing that he wasn't going to make an attempt to say something else.

We shared a short moment of an awkward silence until I broke it "Are you sure you're okay with this?" I don't know why, but I felt as if she was being pushed to do it. I would feel bad if that was the case, and she didn't really want me too.

She nodded. "Yeah. Like I said, it's not a problem. I think that it'll be fun, actually. I'm just glad that there's another girl around. Being the only one around for two years isn't exactly fun." she admitted, forming a smile. Not that I realized it, she really was the only one around. I would hate to be in that situation, at least in living arrangements. I grew up with a sister, so that wasn't a problem. I did kind of know where she was getting at, because sadly, back in the later years of elementary school, I went to a small school where I was the only girl in the class. Now that sucked!

"Well, I'm here how," I said as I put my bags on the open bed leaving against a wall, which already has sheets and everything on it. I forgot to bring some, so it was a relief that they had some that weren't being used. I unzipped the one that I stuffed all my clothes in and looked at them "And I'm not going anywhere for a while," I assured her. I started putting away my clothes, putting them in the drawers that weren't being used.

"I didn't think you would. Well, that's if the guys don't drive you crazy," She commented with a laughed. I couldn't help but laugh myself, finding it a little funny myself. Still, I had the feeling that things would be great here. I had the guys who I'd try to become close with, both as a teammate and a friend. I had wu, someone who knew my mom and that I knew that I could trust. Then I had Nya, a girl who I hoped to become great friends with. "They probably with at some point, they drove me a little crazy eventually."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Kind of. Being the only girl around, they've looked down on me, in a sense. I feel as if they don't accept me as a fighter," She told me. I wondered what she meant by don't accept me as a fighter. I mean, I've heard that she's a Samurai or something, and that's technically better than a Ninja. She looked like she could fend for herself, come one, she had a couple of BB just lying around near her bed. "Like, why haven't they asked me to officially join the team? That's what drives me crazy: They haven't accepted me onto the them."

"You can't be serious? I know how you're the Samurai, that should be enough to join it," I admitted as I put the last of my clothes in the drawers. I didn't bother folding them, because I never folded clothes. "Don't worry, I won't look down on you. I mean, hey, if you ever want to train with me, I'd be up for it. Hand-to-hand combat or weapons" I said as I picked up one of her daggers. "What do you say?"

She chuckled "Sure, that would be great. But to think, one of the first things we'd be talking about would be training," I handed her the weapon and she put it on her nightstand before sitting on her bed. She leaned back and used her hands to keep herself up. "We should talk about things other than that. I wanna hear your story."

"My… Story?" I raised an eyebrow, not exactly sure what she meant. I was open up to talking about other things, maybe get to know each other, but I didn't know what she wanted to talk about. What about my story? Did she want to know about my life now, or about what it was like while I was growing up? Maybe she wanted to know about my life as an elemental? She could tell me what she wanted to know, and I'd tell her.

"Yeah. Like, how did you train alone? It must have been hard, right?"

I sighed and sat on my own bed, crawling across it so that I was leaning against the wall that it rested against. I shifted so that I was facing her. "It wasn't that hard," I started explaining. "I was training since I was, hm, maybe thirteen with my dad. He taught me everything that my mom explained to him. That ended when he died when I was sixteen. I knew that he'd want me to keep training after all we had already done. So I did."

"Ah, that's nice that you did that."

"I guess you could say that. It was hard after he was gone, I was left to train alone, and I had no one to help me. I was a lone wolf, as I see it. I learned things on my own, trained my powers and became stronger. When I turned eighteen, I started traveling around Ninjago and helped people. I still trained in between, but I managed to help a good handful of people. It wasn't until I was twenty-one that I went to live with my sister again and stopped fighting. You're probably thinking that I stopped training, but I still did. I have this little place just outside Jamanakai Village that I trained at. Wasn't as much as I used to, but I still trained a lot."

"Wow, that's some serious dedication," she commented. I guess that she was right. I could have stopped, I could have not trained, but I did. I had the choice to not do anything for the past two year, and yet I still kept on training. It made sense to me that I just didn't want to let it be something of my past. Now thinking back, maybe deep down I didn't really want to stop but I thought that I did. "I have to admit, that's pretty interesting. These guys haven't been training like you, they only really started a few years back. I'm pretty sure it's a little white before you stopped, like a few months," she rubbed her chin, then nodded in confirmation "Yeah, that's about right."

"Damn," I sat forward a little "I can believe that they've gotten this good in such a short amount of time. Well, at least compared to me. I've trained for quite some time and we're just about at the same level," I was a little surprised that they've gotten to the level that they were at now in such little time. A little over two years that's pretty impressive. It seemed a little hard to believe, to be honest, but they somehow managed it, so I wouldn't argue with them. "What about you? What have you done?"

"Oh, pretty much the same as them."

"Ah. Then how come you're not a part of the team? If I was around a while ago, then I would have tried to get you on it. If you're just as good as them, then it would only be fair," I told her. It would be fair. If she's worked just as hard as them, then why couldn't she be on the same team? It just didn't make any sense to me.

She sighed "I've tried to get them to let me, but they say that I need to be an elemental to join. It's an all elemental club to them," I didn't exactly agree with that, you shouldn't have to be an elemental to join the team. There's other elementals and I didn't see any of them here. So why couldn't someone without powers join? Didn't they know that fighting wasn't all about having elemental powers and using them? Other aspects of fighting should have been included. Like can she use weapons? What about fight Hand to Hand?

"Okay, now that's a bunch of crap. I know that you and Kai are siblings, so I get how you didn't pick up on the powers. Like my sister doesn't have them while I do," Just because a parent has the ability doesn't mean that their children would. It was probably only able to be passed down to one person, and in this case, it was me. and in their case, it was Kai. But still, doesn't mean that she should be excluded from the team.

She let herself fall back so that she was laying on her back. "I know. It really sucks, I get jealous of Kai sometimes. I wish that I had powers like he did, then maybe they'd accept me onto the team," I thought about what she said, and I had to agree. After I got in good with the guys, and we've all become good friends, maybe I could talk to them about it. I felt bad for her, because the look on her face just screamed It's unfair. She must have felt left out, obviously. Heck, I would too if I were her.

"Don't worry, I bet you'll be on the team some day."

Right after I said that, she turned her head to me "Hey. did you eat dinner?"

I just realized that I haven't eaten all day, other than the breakfast that my sister had made in the morning. I shook my head. "No. Is there food around here that I can eat?" I questioned, mentally facepalming. What kind of a question is that? Of course they have food here, it's not like they didn't eat or anything. I really didn't care what I ate, as long as I got something to eat.

"Oh, we weren't sure what time you'd be back, so we waited to eat until you got back," she told me. "It's Zane's night to cook. And believe me, he's an amazing cook!"

I rubbed my chin. It would be great if he was like she was telling me, there wasn't anything like having a good cook around to make great food. "Do you know what he's making?" I wondered, only to see Nya shake her head. "Hope it's chicken. Chickens the best, especially in enchiladas. Now those are awesome," ever since I was twelve I've loved them and would never pass up the opportunity to eat a couple ."When's dinner," I sighed in complained just as we heard a knock on the door.

"Hey Nya, time for dinner!" Kai banged against the wooden door, making it shake a little.

"We'll speak of the devil," I said as the two of us jumped off of our beds. I rubbed my hands together "Time to see exactly how good Zane's cooking is."


	12. Chapter Twelve: Resolution

Chapter 12: Resolution

As I walked behind Nya through the hall's and to the mess hall, the smell of delicious food filled the air. I took a deep breath to get a better smell of it and there was no doubt in my mind as to what it was. "Don't tell me that's Hamburgers," I jogged into the mess hall, where most of the others were, and saw a big plate of hamburgers. "I knew it!" I claimed, satisfaction evident in my voice. Hamburgers were just another one of those things I loved. Put cheese, bacon, and all the other good things on it, and you've got yourself the perfect burger!

Everyone else was already there, which only left two seats open. Nya sat first, next to Jay, which left me to sit next to her and Kai. "Now you get to see what I meant by Zanes an amazing cook," she told me. They didn't just smell good, but they tasted good too! There was no doubt in my mind that they'd be as good as she was explaining them to be. "Trust me, you'll fall in love with his cooking."

"No need to portray my food as that good. I'm not the best cook, so it doesn't deserve it," Zane disagreed, putting a hamburger on his plate. How could he say that about his own cooking? I hadn't even tasted any of it, and I could tell that it was good. I noticed the others giving him a look, as if they all didn't agree with his claim.

"Come on Zane, that's not true," Kai argued, "Your cooking is the best around!" the others nodded in agreement. He grabbed my plate and put a hamburger on it before putting it back in front of me. "Why don't we let Cass agree with us too. If she does, then you have to agree too."

"Yeah," I nodded. I had the feeling that the only reason that Zane was saying that his food wasn't as good as people were saying it was because he wasn't that sure about it. Kind of like me with my drawing, I'm always self-conscious about it but people say it's good. So for that, I was going to prove him wrong. Like I agreed to, I took a bite of the hamburger. Right away I smiled "This is actually really good.

"See, I told you Zane!" my eyes shifted in Kai's direction, who was standing up with one hand on the table and the other pointing at Zane. I could see the determination in him to prove Zane wrong in his eyes, and damn was he determined. I didn't know why he was, but I wouldn't rain down on his parade. He sat back down.

"Okay, I agree with you," Zane put his hands up in defense. The others laughed a little bit. I wondered if this happens a lot, where they're laughing like this for little things. I couldn't help but laugh either, I couldn't be the only one not laughing. I had to admit though, it was kind of funny: Kai's reaction. I didn't get why he was so determined to prove Zane wrong, that's what made his reaction funny.

I choked a little on my hamburger as I started "So, it this how things are every day?" I wanted to know, because if it was it was better than I thought it would. I hadn't been at the table for more than five minutes and I could tell that things were always so lively like it was then, and I was liking it.

"Oh, you've barely seen anything," Jay told me. He started to chuckle a little. "Hey guys, remember that time when we got into that food fight. Yeah, that was like two years ago, but still. That was awesome," really? They got into a food fight before? I remember the one time I'd ever gotten into one, which was when I was like nine and it was with a couple of my friends. And I had to admit, they were pretty fun, just as they were messy.

"Ha, sounds like fun," I spoke up, letting out a small chucking. I sat back in my chair and took another bite of the burger in my hand. "So, I've been meaning to ask, what exactly do you guys do to train?" I started to wonder how they trained compared to how I did it. No matter how they did, I could handle it and could adapt to it. I could train any way I needed to, I just preferred to do I how I was used to. For hand to hand, I prefer to used a method that's more on the kick boxing side. And as for training with my elemental powers, I do a good amount of meditation and work it in with my kickboxing. I wasn't exactly sure how they worked with their powers, though, because everyone was different.

"It's different every day," Lloyd answered. "Sometimes we push our limits, other days we take it easy. We mostly focus on hand to hand mixed with using our powers, if you're wondering," hopefully I could use my normal kickboxing training, that would be great. You'd think that I'd Be able to since everyone's way of fighting was different. So as long as I trained, it would be fine, right? Yeah that made sense for it to be fine.

"Okay that's good to know. But anyways, I've been meaning to ask, what's your guy's opinions on the snakes?" For some reason I started thinking about that, betting that the others were as well. Why wouldn't they be? After all this time of not doing any harm to people, they finally decided to do something? I knew that I shouldn't have been worrying about that because this was supposed to be a chill moment (or whatever you want to call it), but I couldn't just let it go. It was racing through my mind as if it wouldn't stop until I got the answers it wanted.

Cole raised an eyebrow at my question, but speculated "I don't really know what to think," figured, all of us probably had no what was going on and how to make things to be "I remember Scales, one of the generals by the way, said that they weren't going to fight us anymore. Heck, they've even interacted with people peacefully for a little while now. So I honestly don't know," after hearing his words, I glanced over at the others.

"I have to agree," Jay nodded in agreement. "Unless they've decided to start up again."

"Well," Kai cut Jay off "There's no clear reason to it. It doesn't exactly make sense that they'd do this. We should look into this."

"No, we need to," Lloyd admitted. I had to agree with them, we needed to. I wasn't sure how, but we'd end up finding them. We couldn't talk to them unless we knew where they were living, which we didn't, or at least I didn't. "We can go have a little talk with them in a couple of days. As for now," Lloyd's gaze shifted over to me. "We need to see how she trains and get used to training with her. Give it two days, and we should be fine. It's our main priority, after all: seeing how she trains."

"Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Back up, how can you say that?" I interrupted. "I don't see how you can. Dealing with this problem is more important than that," was he really that stupid, putting that in front of dealing with the problem? The fact I training could wait, but the thing with the snakes suddenly popping up and attacking someone out of no where. It was clearly more important, for all we knew it could be something big.

"I just thought," he tried saying before he paused for a second. "I just thought that it was important to get used to working with you before we actually did something with you."

Kai sighed. "Lloyd, that doesn't mean that we can't go now and check things out. Seriously, you really are an idiot," he hit Lloyd in the back of the head, causing him to wine a little. I tried to hold back a laugh, but a little one came out which luckily no one noticed. Or I at least hope not."She's a part of the team now, because we trusted her. We should have faith in her that she'd work well with us. She probably feels the same. a little nervous about working with us for the first time."

"Correction, I'm feeling fine about it," I corrected him. I really did trust them, because they were students of Wu. My mom trusted him and I heard that he was one of the most honorable man she'd fought with, and he was one of the most capable fighters she'd seen. So I had faith that they were great as well and trustable. That's why they gained my trust and faith. "I can see where you guys might be coming from. You've worked as a team for so long and it must be hard for a change. Maybe you're just worried about how things will change, possibly wondering how I'll affect the team. Will I prove to be a good team mate? Will I fail? The only way you can tell is for me to actually do something. Screw training, we need to go and check this thing out," I let my fist slam into the opposite palm, showing that I was determined to do it. In my opinion it would help get them to fully trust me and see that I wouldn't be a burden to the team.

"I have to agree," Cole agreed with me. "We wouldn't know for sure unless we see her in action. Then we'll know how she handles things, and we'll be able to get used to having her on to the team. We might not end up fighting, but we'll be able to see her communication skills, how does she handle situations like this," It was good to see that there was some people on my side, it made things easier. Now I wouldn't feel bad for standing up against Lloyd's wishes, or speak my mind. "I'm deciding that we're going to go in the morning to check things out," he informed us.

"Nice, I was hoping that we could, I'd like to see things turn out. I want to find out what the problem with these snakes are," Jay interrupted. He was thinking like I was, I was in the mood to find see what was up with them. "I agree on leaving in the morning. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some work to do. Our machines don't fix themselves," with that, he grabbed another hamburger and left the room.

I was going to grab another burger, but my hand landed on an empty place. The emptiness of the plate left a sinking feeling in my chest, and I was right, Jay took the last burger! "Damn it," I muttered, wishing that I had been the one to grab it and not Jay. "Well anyways, we can leave in the morning like we've agreed, I'm fine with that," I stood up and stretched my arms. "I'm just gonna go back to the room and do something. See you guys then," left the room without saying anything else, I had nothing else to say.

I entered the room that was going to be my new room for a while and plopped onto the bed with a sigh. "Wow, what a night," I admitted to myself. It was a long day and I was already exhausted, which sucked. I hated feeling worn out because it made me feel like crap, it was never exciting. I looked around for a second before aiming s little when the door opened, revealing Nya. "Oh, hey Nya," I greeted.

"Hi, again," she said walking over to her own bed. "I'm sorry about them, specifically Lloyd. They suck like that sometimes,"

I sighed "I bet," they're nice and everything but they seem a little too serious about teamwork. I respected that but hoped that they wouldn't go overboard with it. If things got out of hand I'd speak my mind about it like I always did. Even if I was new I'd try everything to keep things sane within the team. I'd only sat down once with them and they already had a disagreement, There was bound to be more, and I'd try to prevent it. I'd do good for this team.


	13. Chapter Thirteen: The Kusarigama

Chapter 13: The Kusarigama

AN- Kuma is the Japanese version of a sickle

I laid on my bed with my hands folded behind my head, looking into the darkness that filled the room. I wasn't exactly sure what time it was but I knew that it was pretty late because there wasn't any sunlight left to fill the room. I sighed wishing that I would fall asleep. I wasn't sure why but it seemed like my mind just didn't want to fall asleep. The snoring coming from Nya across the room wasn't helping one bit. I rolled over, taking the covers with me and sighed. "She'd better not do this any more," there was just something about snoring that annoyed me so much. It was probably because I slept in the same room with my snoring sister until I was nine, which would keep me up pretty late. That could also explain why I go to be late, normally falling asleep somewhere between ten and twelve.

In order to ignore the snoring, I tried to just think about what was going to happen tomorrow, or today, which ever day it was at that point. I wanted to see how they'd handle things and if they'd even let me do things. They're the ones to have a long past with them so it'd make sense for them to want to talk to them, and not me. I started to think that they'd make me stay behind them and not do anything at all. Maybe I was just overthinking things and I didn't see them in the right way. I mean, based off of what Nya said to me, it sounded like they only liked to work within the five of them. If that was the case, then why would they let me on the team in the first place?

I shook my head to forget about that, and started to hear Nya's snoring again. "Okay, I can't stand this," I muttered. I was getting really annoyed, so I threw the blanket off of me and left the room. I wasn't sure where I was going to go, or where I was going at all, so I just walked. I ended up in the kitchen, maybe I could just sleep in there? "Nah, it'll be weird to sleep in here," I told myself as a stopped in front of the fridge. "You know what, I'm hungry," I thought to myself. I opened the door and looked inside, scanning the various food. "Nope, nope, nope," I counted off as I ceased to find something I was in the mood food. "Oh my god," If I was seeing what I thought I saw, it would be awesome. And it was! "A. Damn. Cake!"

I moved the foods that were in the way of me reaching it, before taking it out. It was just a small portion of one, but it was good enough for me, any amount of cake was. What was even better is that it was a corner piece! You always got more frosting out of the corner pieces, which was the best part. "If this is someones, I'm not sorry. Nothing's gonna keep me from eating this," I smiled, even though no one could see, and decided to take it to the same outside training area I was at when I first came here, that I sparred with the others at. I sat up against a wall with only small lights around the place to see.

"What a way to start off my time here," I sighed to myself, wishing that the loud snoring of Nya didn't keep me out of the room to sleep. I decided to take the time to think about anything I could, which my mind right away started to think about what was going to happen with the snakes. From what I could tell they we were just going to go and talk to them about it and see what was their problem. Was it the whole group or was it just a few rogue snakes? It was hard to tell at this point, but I had a gut feeling that it was the second one. We'd probably hear of another attack by now, which we haven't, if it was all of them. I could see a few of them getting tired of being good to humans and decided that it was time that they had a little chance. It happens everywhere, there's never going to be one species that doesn't have its' bad guys.

I took a quick bite of the cake that I had resting on my lap, which turned out to be pretty good. "Wow, this is pretty decent. Wonder who made it," I whispered to myself. I bet that it was Zane, he was the only one who I could tell was a good cook. As I continued eating, I started getting a little bored, but before I knew it the cake was gone and in my stomach. "Damn, that was a good cake," it really was, to be honest, one of the best ones I'd ever had. Unfortunately, I still wasn't tired, not one bit. I set the plate down beside me before looking around. Seeing that I couldn't fall asleep, I was thinking that I could train for a bit.

"Well, I've got nothing else better to do," I told myself. I walked over to the weapons rack and scanned through them in hoped of finding the same pair of Kusarigama that I was using when sparring. I only used them once and I could tell that I'd enjoy using them because they seemed to grip pretty well in my hands, and I loved using weapons that worked like that. I finally found them on one of the racks and picked it up, them still being as comfortable in my grip as before. As I was about to go to start training, I saw another pair in the corner of my eyes. I approached them and smiled. "Now this is a better one," instead of it having two blades on the end, it only had one blade on an end with an iron weight at the end. I put the one I was already holding down and picked up the new one, which somehow managed to be more comfortable than the other one. "I'll use these instead."

I walked into a clear area, that only had a few training dummies in it, and shifted my feet so that they were in a battle-ready stance, ready to give them a good swing. I took the Kuma in my right hand and held the chain in my left. I slowly let Iron weight start swinging beside me before i brought it over my head, still letting it swing. I took a deep breath and quickly whipped it back and at a training dummy. I watched it wrap around the training sword that it was holding and pulled it out of it's holder, what it's hand would be if it was living.

As it fell to the ground, I took the sickle in my hand that held it against the neck of the dummy, and would claim victory if it was a real fight. I stepped back to get a good look at the other dummies. I grabbed part of the chain and slid my grip closer to the middle before letting go of the sickle. I didn't hesitate to swing it around and wrapped the chain around another dummy. I whipped it to my left and let the thing fly to a wall across from me, which ended up hitting something in the way. I saw that it was someone, and that someone was Cole. "Gah!" I heard him shriek when the large wooden dummy hit him in the stomach.

"I'm sorry!" I ran over to him and helped him get the training dummy off of him, leaving the kusarigama on . I can't believe that that just happened! What was he even doing out here at this time? Who am I to ask, I was here already doing exactly what I was asking about him. "I didn't see you, and I couldn't stop the thing from hitting you in time," I tried.

He got up and put his hand up, assuring me "It's fine, you didn't know I was there. But what are you doing out here, though?" he questioned me.

"Oh, you know, couldn't fall asleep. Nya wouldn't stop snoring and it is so annoying!" I complained to him. He had to understand where I was coming from, right? He had to because no one liked sleeping in the same room as someone who snored, especially when it was really loud. "Plus I was hungry," I added.

"I hope you didn't eat my cake," he laughed "I don't know what I'd do without it. You wouldn't believe what happened the last time someone tried to eat it. Jay almost had to go to the hospital."

My eyes widened for a moment before I glanced over to the empty plate. "Uh, don't worry. I ate something else," I looked back at his hoping that he wouldn't catch on about the fact that I ate his cake. I was debating whether or not I felt bad, it seems like he wanted to eat it himself but I enjoy it so much! "Well anyways, what about you, what are you doing out here?" I was going to ask him the same, so I just did it now.

"I heard someone out here and I wanted to see who it was, and I can put to see you training," he admitted. "It's like one, you know?"

"Really?" I scratched the back of my head. "Didn't notice," I really didn't even think about looking at the time, but it was good to finally find out. I looked around and walked over to the kusarigama that I left on the ground and put them back on the rack. "Not sure If I'll fall asleep or not because I'm not even tired."

"You fall asleep late, too, huh?" he raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," I nodded. "I guess you could say that. I'm the kind of person who stays up late and wakes up late. Well, at least when I can. Don't know why but I can function on less than six hours of sleep, less than four if I'm lucky," I joked. It's not that I tried or anything but I could run off of little sleep if needed. It didn't have many benefits, the only that I could think of was being able to fight without a problem if I had gotten little sleep. "What about you? You said too."

"Yeah, I stay up late sometimes thinking about stuff. Mostly training, I tend to plan out what I'm going to do before the morning so I can get right to things at the start of training," damn, that was some serious dedication to training. I took training seriously too, but I didn't go out of my way to plan what I did the day before. I was the kind of person who prefered to go with the flow. "Well, uh, I'm going to head back to bed. You should do the same," he finished, pointing his thumb in the direction of the rooms we all stayed at. I agreed, maybe it was a good idea to try to fall asleep.

"Yep, got it," I waited for him to leave, which took a few seconds, before running over to the plate and then for the kitchen. Thank god he didn't see the plate with all of the cake crumbs on it! I bet that he would have had my ass if he found out, which is why I wasn't going to say a word to him. When I made it to my room I tried to be quiet so I wouldn't wake up Nya, who was still fast asleep. But luckily for me her snoring wasn't as loud as before, maybe I could finally fall asleep. With even more luck, I fell asleep in no time, just waiting for morning to come along so we could go see what the deal with the snakes was.


	14. Chapter Fourteen: If Only I Knew

Chapter 14: If Only I Knew

"Come on, we're getting ready to leave!" I faintly heard someone's' voice as my eyes slowly opened. I could see the blurred color of blue standing at the foot of my bed with someone pulling at my covers. I just sighed and ignored them, still half asleep. "We'll leave without you if you don't wake up," Jay started to pull harder on my blanket. Well, maybe if he'd stop pulling on my blanket I'd get up. I kicked his hand rather hard and he pulled it away, holding it in his other "Hey, hey, don't kick me."

"Sorry," I finally threw my covers off of me, watching them fall on the floor. I yawned and pulled myself out of my warm bed, wishing that I could have had like five more minutes like a lot of other people would probably want as well. "Now please get out, gotta get dressed," I waited for him to get out of the room before grabbing my Ninja Gi. I looked over at Nya's bed and just realized that she was gone, I wonder where she was. I shrugged and put my Gi on, then headed out for the training area. I walked in to see the guys talking to each other. "Heyo. You guys ready to go?"

The five turned to me, Lloyd speaking up. "Yeah, we were just waiting on you."

"Sorry to keep you waiting," I laughed.

"No problem," Kai insisted. "Let's get going, I wanna find out about all of this as soon as we can."

"Same," the six of us made our way for the front of the monastery before stopping. Weren't we supposed to be leaving for the monastery, not stopping in front of it. I watched the others form their elemental dragons, Kai and Jay starting to fly off. "Uh, guys, forgetting something?" I called to them. Didn't they remember that I hadn't learned that yet and that I couldn't just fly there on my own? I swear to god if they didn't, it'd just prove to me that they weren't paying attention, especially Cole and he was the one that I told!

Cole looked down at me. "Oh, I almost forgot," almost? How do you almost forget something? You either forget it or you don't. "Need a lift?" he cracked a half smile to me, landing the dragon so I could hop on as well.

"Obviously," I did exactly that, right before he flew off after the others. I wasn't sure where we were going, they didn't tell me where they were hiding out, but I trusted them that they'd get us there in one piece. "So, when am I gonna learn to summon a dragon too, huh?" I questioned him. Not surprisingly, it was one of the first, if not the first, thing that wanted to learn. I mean, who wouldn't want to learn to summon a dragon that they could ride on? It'd sure be easier to travel around. especially alone. That way I wouldn't need to walk everywhere I went, it would have been helpful to know before I came here.

"As soon as we get this snake situation sorted out, don't worry," good, I was looking forward to it being the first thing that I'd end up learning, like I had been hoping. He continued to fly behind the others, and it had been a quick thirty minutes before we actually got somewhere that wasn't forest. And where was it, fricken Ninjago City! In all my life I'd only been there a couple of times, and it seemed so much bigger now for some reason. We landed in a park in the heart of the city, colossus buildings surrounding the whole thing. They looked at each other, then into the streets. "Come one guys," Cole told us as he started running to the streets.

I ran behind all five, wondering where they were going. Where could the snakes be inside the city? We stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and at a manhole. I raised an eyebrow "Where are we going exactly?" They all pointed to the manhole, which meant… Dear god "Don't tell me we need to go down there," I groaned. Why would they want to go down there in the first place, the snakes had to be living there. I really didn't feel like ending up smelling like crap, but we had to go down there. "You know what, screw it, let's go."

I followed them down the later, almost falling down. "Damn you old, rusty ladder," I landed on the ground and jogged to catch up to the guys. It was pretty dark down there so Kai used some of his fire to light up the tunnel enough so that we could see where we were going. Like I suspected, it smelt like crap down there so I covered up my nose. "How can they live down here?" I wondered.

"They're snakes, what do you expect?" Jay inquired. He was right, they were snakes and based off of what I could tell they didn't really seem to care about where they lived. Hey, if they wanted to do that then so be it, it wasn't my problem. They stopped me at a large opening in the side of the sewer, where Jay yelled. "Yo, Snakes, we're coming in!" they kept on walking so I kept on following, ending up in an area that was full of snakes. Hypnobrai, Constrictai, you name it. I got a little tense, tightening my fist, ready to fight if I needed to, it was just my instinct to raise my guard at a moment like that.

One of the larger Hypnobrai came slithering over to us. "Good to see you five again, it's been a while," he greeted them. I noticed a long tail trailing him which made me suddenly realize that that was the Hypnobrai general, Scales from what I have heard. "And someone new, I see," he added, his gaze shifting to me.

"Yeah, this is Cass, the Master of Wind and newest member of the team."

"Well, nice to meet you, but anyways, what brings you here?" He questioned. Did he have absolutely no clue about the snakes that had attacked the women back in Jamanakai Village yesterday? Either he was really stupid or he had no clue what had happened, because he would have know that that's why were were there if he had known.

"Uh, we wanted to see if you knew about the attack over in Jamanakai Village, a couple of Constrictai," Cole told him. Scale's curious expression immediately turned into a confused one. It didn't take much for me to realize that he didn't actually know anything about the attack. Then, like I was thinking before, the ones that attacked yesterday were rogue, or that's at least what made the most sense now. "Do you know anything about it?"

"No, I don't," just like he was leading on, he didn't know about it. "What I can tell you is that a few of the Constrictai have gone missing, about a week ago to be exact. I know for a fact that they wouldn't just run off like that and attack someone."

"What makes you so sure?" I wondered. I wasn't sure about the others, who I had the feeling were close allies with him, didn't find it weird that he had no clue about the incident whatsoever or not. I wasn't going to wait around for one of them so speak about about it so I took the role of doing that myself. "I mean, how do you know they wouldn't do that? You can't know what all of you are thinking all the time, if at all," I just wanted to see what he had to say about that, and if he had anything else to say about the matters.

He stood in front of us, silent for a moment before acknowledging "The last I remember, they were off to help someone near Jamanakai Village, but they never came back. I was getting worried, I even sent some of the Venomari to see what the deal with them was, but they didn't come back either. I fear that something bad happened to them."

I rubbed my chin, starting to grow a little suspicious about all of this. First we find out that they left to help someone near Jamanakai Village but ended up attacking someone instead? Were they lying to him and really went there to do that? No, that didn't make any sense. And then they never came back, that doesn't sound right to me. Something seemed off about it and I had the feeling that something bad did happen. I knew that they were snakes, and they haven't exactly been the best creatures around, but that didn't mean we could just stand around and do nothing. "That doesn't sound good."

"I agree," Zane pitched in. He walked in front of Scales, adding "We'll look into this, don't worry. We'll try to see what happened to them," after talking for another minute or so about the situation and the fact that we were going to try them, we finally left.

"Thank god we're out of that toilet," I muttered, thankful that I didn't need to smell the nose killing stench of the sewage system anymore. I was the last one to climb out, and the last to join in on a circle that the others created. "So, what are we going to do about this?" I asked them, curious to hear what they thought about all of it and what they were thinking that we should have done.

"I think that a couple of us should go over to Jamanakai Village and check it out," Lloyd suggested. "We don't all need to go, it's not that hard of a job for only two or three of us to do."

"I say that it's you, Zane, and I. We can go now," Cole chimed in, turning to Jay and Kai "You two can go back to the Monastery and train with her a bit," I didn't see why we couldn't all go, it wouldn't hurt to have us all go, but I wasn't going to argue with it because all five of them agreed to it.

I sighed "Okay, let's go," I started to walk off, remembering I didn't have the ability to use an elemental dragon yet. "Still gonna need a ride," Jay let me ride with him back to the monastery which somehow managed to feel like a faster trip than the way over to Ninjago City. I was happy about that because Jay's Elemental Dragon was shocking me a little bit, obviously because it was a lightning dragon, of course. Thank god I didn't chose to ride with Kai, I bet that I would've been burnt and not shocked, I'd take suffering from a little shock over a burn any day. "I wanna get straight to training. Maybe the two of can show me how you train? I could show you a couple of things as well."

"Yeah, that sounds fine. We'll start in ten," Kai said, walking away, along with Jay. Okay, so like I was curious about, I was finally going to get the chance to train with them. Yeah, it wasn't all five of them but I was going to take what I could get. I wasn't going to try to get them to show me how to summon a dragon or anything like that, I was fine with just learning how their training worked. Well, I'd accept to learn anything other than the rules of their training if they offered it to me, I wouldn't turn anything down. I just didn't want to look like I rushed things by asking them to teach me a specific thing when they weren't all there.


	15. Chapter Fifteen: Revealing the Unseen

Chapter Fifteen: Revealing the Unseen

Left… Right…. Right… Left… I counted off in my mind as I punched at a training dummy. Within a couple more punches my hand started to turn red so I stopped for a second. I looked at Kai and Jay training, both practicing their elemental powers. I walked over to them and smiled. "As we were planning, you guys gonna show me anything I need to know?" I hoped that they were planning on showing me something exciting that they normally did while they trained.

"Yeah, a couple of things," Kai began "We wanted to let you know that we normally just train how ever we want, and occasionally we'll work together and spar, along with practicing our elemental powers. We give each other tips on them, even though we don't actually use the other elements," just like I suspected, it was going to be pretty basic. I was just happy that I was still going to be able to use my preferred Kickboxing style training.

"Do any of you by any chance use any kick boxing with your training?"

"Yeah," Jay interrupted "Lloyd and Cole do a little bit of kick boxing. Why? Do you kick box?"

I nodded "Yep, it's the main part of my training, use it to improve both my hand-to-hand and my elemental powers. I wasn't sure if you guys did or not, so I was just asking out of curiosity," I told him. Maybe I could train with them two using kick boxing style, I mean, it wouldn't hurt. It's actually be fun to train that way with someone else and not alone. What would be great is if we could Kickbox against each other a couple of times, that's be fun too.

"Hey, we were actually talking and we know the first thing that we wanna show you."

"Which would be?" I raised an eyebrow, rather curious as to what they were planning. It was bound to be good, I bet. I could tell that they were great fighters like I was so maybe they could show me something that I didn't know, like I was planning on showing them. I knew that we'd end up exchanging tips and whatnot that could help us improve, that's what a team did after all.

Well, we think that it would be useful if you knew how to summon your elemental dragon too. Maybe we can teach you a couple neat tips and tricks to help you?" Kai offered. How ironic, I was hoping that they'd offer to show me it, that way I didn't actually need to ask about it. It was better that way, like I said. He scratched the back of his head "What do you say? It's your call."

I ran a hand through my hair, but didn't need to think much about my response "I don't see why we can't. That was actually one of the first things I wanted to learn from you guys," I was actually excited that I'd learn something today, especially the thing that I was aiming to learn first. "So we gonna go try things out or what?"

"Yeah, but we should go where there's actually room to try this out at," I looked around, realizing that there wasn't an open space here, or at least not enough to try summoning an elemental dragon in. I nodded and followed the two outside the monastery and to a clearing not that far from it. It was the perfect space, it was basically an open field. "Okay, so we're gonna teach you the basics about summoning your elemental dragon. It's hard for you to actually summon it here, but it'd be nice for us to show you, along with tell you about it in the process."

I raised an eyebrow "What do you mean it'd be hard for me to actually summon it here? You guys can summon them at will, how hard can it be? It seems so simple," I didn't exactly see how I'd have a difficult time doing it, what was hard about it? They can do it anytime they want and quick, which appears to be no problem.

"It's not as simple as you think, or at least when you first do it," Jay broke in. "In order to summon them, you need to take control of your fears or doubts. The problem with that, it being your first time, you need to actually control them. After the first time, you can do it whenever you want to as long as a fear or doubt isn't getting to you."

I took a moment to let all of that sink it, maybe it wasn't going to be as easy to summon the dragon for the first time as I thought. "Oh, well then," At the moment, I wasn't scared of anything or doubting myself, so there was no hope in me fulfilling the task. It sucked that I couldn't, but that wasn't going to stop me from trying to learn everything that I could about it. "What else is there to know about it" I would sit there as long as I needed to in order to learn everything that there was to learn, no questions asked.

"There's not much more to know. For one, they'll disappear if you let your fear or doubts eat away at you again.," Jay said, walking a little ways from Kai and I before summoning his elemental dragon. "When you learn to control them, it's not that hard to summon them and keep them around. It's like a connection, as long as you can balance it and maintain it, it'll always be there."

I started to understand the idea of summoning a dragon and keeping it around, the example of a connection made things easy to comprehend. The way I saw it, you could just do it and that there wasn't much to it. You just needed to put in the effort to keep it around and act like it's a part of you, I think. "So basically, it's a part of you. Well, it'd make more sense for it to be a part of your soul or something. Kind of like our elemental powers, they're just in us waiting to be used."

"Exactly," Kai nodded. It felt weird knowing that I could potentially do it, the power was just waiting inside of me, eager to be used. It's been inside me, inside my heart or soul, which ever one you want to see it as, all of my life and I never knew it. I wish that my dad had been around to explain that to me because it would have been nice to already been able to do this, and not have to wait until now to learn it. I felt behind them, now realizing that there were things that I could still learn. After all, one can always improve, and I seemed to be just getting started.

Jay let his Elemental Dragon disappeared and he jumped next to Kai. "You seem to understand things, so once you get the opportunity to, you can try it for real."

"Can't wait," I smiled. I decided that I wouldn't force myself to do it, forcing something could do more harm than good. So I was just going to wait until the time was right to try it out. Still thinking about it, I thought I saw something in the corner of my eye. I turned to get a better look at what ever it was and a human like figure came into view. "Hey, someone's in the bushes!" I snapped, not hesitating to run after the person who, themselves, dashed in the opposite direction of us.

I couldn't believe that someone was watching us the whole time and none of us noticed! "Hey, stop!" I heard Kai demand from behind me. I just ignored him and kept running as fast as my legs could take me after the person. I ran faster, getting far ahead of Kai and Jay, thanks to the fact that my element was wind, one of the advantages of being the Master of Wind. "Cass, catch her!" Kai yelled to me, probably in hopes of me getting her since they weren't fast enough.

I got to be only a few yards away from them, which I could now to make out to be a girl. She looked behind me, and then went faster herself, before running at a speed that even I couldn't catch up with. Damn, she was almost going as fast as… Turner? That couldn't be right, only he could reach speeds like that. No matter what was going on, I couldn't let her escape. I used some of my wind, letting it blast against the ground behind me, so that I went flying through the air. I landed in front of her path, which cause her to crash into me. I managed to stay standing where as she fell backwards. I created a wind barrier around us, insuring that she couldn't get away. "Tell me why you were watching us, you're not getting way. Also, tell me, why are you using Griffin Turners powers?"

There was no way in hell I was going to let her leave until I got answers, and even then, I'd have a hard time letting her leave. I couldn't just let someone who was watching us go like that, there had to be a good reason for it. Plus, with the fact that she was using Turner's powers had to mean something, and we needed to know what was up. She sighed as she stood up, not even trying to run out of the wind barrier. "I know that I came off as a threat, but I'm not, I'm actually on your side. I was actually here to talk to the ninja," hearing that caused me to raise an eyebrow, why did she want to talk to them… Or us… It was probably just them because I doubted anyone else knew that I was actually part of the team now. "I'll start off by explaining myself: I'm Shadow Sparks, A Master of Speed."


	16. Chapter Sixteen: Divide by Zero

Chapter Sixteen: Divide by Zero

"I'll start off by explaining myself: I'm Shadow Sparks, A Master of Speed," she admitted. My eyes widened and I let the wind around us die down. What, how could there be another Elemental Master of Speed? I thought that there was only one for each in one generation, what was up with that? "I know it sounds crazy, but I'm related to him. I'm a cousin of his, in some way. So that's how we share the elemental power of speed."

The guys came running over to us, both stopping to catch their breaths. "Why'd you take down your barrier or what ever that was?" Jay panted. He looked up at her, letting sparks fill his hand, as well as Kai letting Fire form in his own hands. Like I would, they raised their guard, probably thinking that she was a threat of some sort.

I put my hands up to let them know that things were perfectly fine. "It's okay guys, she'd not planning on doing anything stupid. She's actually here to talk to us," I explained and watched as they let the fire and sparks in their hand vanish into thin air. They started to calm down, which meant that they were willing to listen to what she had to say, just like I was. I was planning on listening to everything that she had to say but I wouldn't let her get away if she did try something stupid, which was still a possibility. I turned to Shadow, curious about what she had to say to the three of us.

"I was going to that monastery of yours to talk to you and your team, but then I walked into you guys talking in the clearing. I stopped to see what you guys were up to, I really didn't want interrupt. I was planning on approaching you guys, but you saw me and decided to chase me," now that I heard it from her, I kind of felt bad that I right away assumed that she was a bad guy or something like that. Yet again, anyone else like us would have done that, gone after her and chase her down until they got her.

"Okay, but that doesn't explain why you wanted, no still want to talk to us," I told her.

"Well, obviously you guys have noticed that I'm an elemental," she informed us, even though we did know about it, but what did that have to do with everything? Yeah, we were elementals too, but still, that didn't exactly explain things. "I wanted to talk to you guys about that. I've heard that you guys are a team of elementals. I was, uh, wondering if I could join or something. I know you'd probably say no, but I want you to hear me out,"

Wow, that's not what I expected at all! Why would she want to join anyways? Maybe she was like me and wanted to make a difference, and thought that it would be better to do it with a group. We did make up the only team, or known team, of elementals so it made sense that she'd come to us "Well, why would we say no? Yeah we don't know you but that doesn't mean we wouldn't listen to you," Kai told her, adding "Maybe if you just talk to us, we can talk to the others about it. The only thing is, this is a crazy time for it, because she actually just joined us."

I never thought about it that way, and there was no doubt in my mind that it'd be weird for the guys and possibly even Nya if she did happen to join. What I knew was definitely weird was how we found out she wanted to join… but us chasing her down and her being up front about it. I wasn't sure about about the others, but I was willing to give them a chance. It would only be one person to get used to and that shouldn't have been a problem. The only thing was that I wasn't sure of was if the others would let me have a say in it, I just joined the team yesterday after all. The question was: what place was I to voice my opinion.

I got a good look at Shadow who I now observed to look lost. I wasn't sure what she had been through before now but I had the feeling as if she was lost and had nowhere to go. Just by the look in her I could tell that she was hoping that we'd let her in. I could see it in her eyes, they just screamed let me join, please, I don't know what I'd do if you say no. "Oh," she looked down at the ground, kicking a rock away from her foot, but then looked back at us. "I didn't know. Maybe this wasn't a good time to come?" she was about to walk away from the three of us, which surprised me.

"Wait!" I called out, using my wind to jump in front of her like I did just a few minutes prior. I put my hands up hoping to make sure that she didn't try walking off again. "Hey, we never said we wouldn't think about it. It's just so sudden for them, and it'd only be another big change that they would need to cope with," I straightened my back then scooted over so that I could see Jay and Kai. "I know that I shouldn't have a say in this, because this was your team first, but I say give her a shot. You gave me a shot, so why not? We should do it now, let her join, that way it'd be less of a struggle to get used to this. You're still in the middle of getting used to me, right? Then just get used to two people instead of one," I saw the two sweat a little, which I guessed was from feeling anxious about what they were supposed to do. I sighed, adding "Come on, it's not that big of a difference from having just me here. It's only one more person, seven on the team instead of six, big deal. I'm not sure about the two of you, but I'm all for this idea."

I silence fell between the four of us until Jay broke it with a sigh. "I don't see a downside to this, so I have to say that I'm for it two," he turned to Kai, curiosity filling his facial expression. "What about you?" even if Kai wasn't on our side, there was still LLoyd, Cole, and Zane who could agree. And if at least two of them agreed, then we could give her a shot. Majority rules after all.

"I agree too. It's not that big of a change compared to just you joining, so what's the harm?"

I immediately saw the frown on Shadow's face turn into a smile. "Are you guys serious?" she wondered, hopefulness evident in her voice. I could tell right away that her hopes just came true, or how ever you want to describe it, because she seemed happier now.

"Yeah," I nodded. "We'd just need to talk to the others about it, but I don't see why they'd have a problem with it," well, at least now that I saw that Kai and Jay didn't have a problem with it. They were all bound to agree, how could they say no if three of us already did? I mean, what are the odds that the three of us say yes and the others say no without giving it much thought? "They're actually gone on a mission now, so maybe we can just get to know you until they come back?"

"Okay, but why don't you guys? Can you introduce yourselves? I know about the five original ones. but I don't know which one is which."

"I'm Kai," Kai interrupted, pointing to Jay "And that's Jay. The other's are out like Cass said. She's the newest member."

"Yeah," I gave a slight wave. "I'm Cass. You know what they're all the masters of, but I'm the Master of Wind. Well, we should head back so we can talk to Wu about this…"


	17. Chapter Seventeen: A Night To Remember

Chapter Seventeen: A Night To Remember

I sat across across from at the small table that had been resting in the training room for people to sit and rest at. I tapped my fingers against the wooden table as I wondered what to say, waiting for Jay and Kai to be done talking to Wu. "So," I broke the silence. "you really want to join the team, huh?" It slowly began to make sense to me that she wanted to, she probably wanted to work with people to help make a difference. It was hard to do that alone, but it was much easier when you were working with other people, no one could deny that.

"Yeah," she nodded "but I'm surprised that you all agreed right off the bat. I never thought you would and that you'd need to think about it instead, but I guess not," she told me. I didn't think that she would think about that and wonder if we'd say no at first. At least we didn't, it felt like it was the right thing to do by giving her a chance and not letting her down. We'd just need to wait and see what Lloyd, Cole, and Zane had to say and if they'd agree. I had the feeling that they'd say yes though because they didn't seem mean enough to just say no. We give people chances, or at least people who deserve them, and won't not give someone a chance.

"Well I probably would have thought the same thing if I were you. But hey, it's just where the wind took you," I chuckled, taking appreciation that I could say that as a catch phrase sometimes. You just couldn't be an elemental and not do that! There was just something about it that you couldn't resist, and maybe it'd be fun to see which one of us could come up with the most. I coughed, to get myself back on track. "I have the feeling that they'll agree to let you join, trust me," I assured her, hoping to keep her hopes up. "Oh, maybe while we wait you can show me what you can do. I'm actually curious to see what you can do with that elemental powers of yours, along with you hand-to-hand combat skills. It'd be nice to see what you can do with a weapon."

"I don't see why I can't. But let me warn you, I'm badass with a bow and arrow," Shadow avowed, seeming confident in her skills of using a bow and arrow. I wanted to see just how good she was with a weapon and hoped that she was just as good as she was claiming to be. I've never actually seen anyone use one for a while, and the only time that I have is when I was testing out a bunch of weapons to see which one seemed to fit me the best. The Bow and Arrow was a long shot, a very very long shot, which is why I don't use it myself. Kusarigama just seemed to click with me the first time I used it, and I just had the gut feeling that it was the weapon for me, and look at me now, I'm using it now and really good at it.

I walked over to the weapons rack with her and let her pick out the bow of her choice, her picking up a silver bow that looked to be strongly put together, yet light at the same time. But who was I to judge a bow and arrow? I didn't know much about them compared to a kusarigama. I knew a lot about those and I never came across a person who knew more than I did. You could say: I'm the master of the art of Kusarigama. Probably not though, there's bound to be people out there that are better at it than I am. I'm just great at it compared to how long I've been working with them, which was since I was seventeen, so about six years now.

She walked over to the training dummies that had targets on them. What I liked about the ones here was that there was a few different ones: Those, metal ones that were good for elemental powers, stuffed ones that were good for combat, and wooden ones wrapped in cloth which were good for weapons. Well, the ones with targets were good for weapons too, but more for long ranged ones like the Bow and Arrow, Kusarigama, Throwing Knives, Etc. "You can go when you're ready."

"Okay," she nodded, stepping in front of the dummy at an appropriate distance. I stepped back to give her enough room to shoot, sitting on a bench. I let my elbows rest on my knees as I observed how Shadow handled the bow and arrow. She gripped the handle tight in her left hand and grabbed an arrow with her right. She carefully put it on the string of the bow and pulled it back. A few deep breaths later she let it fly and it almost hit the center of the target.

"Damn," I leaned forward. "That's good, but can you shoot without taking so long? It's not that it was bad, just in battle it'd be better to go as quickly as you can and not wait," I suggested to her. She was a good shot but in my opinion, it'd be better if she was a little quicker and didn't hesitate to let the arrow go. I sat back and added "I think that it'd help you, believe me."

She grabbed another arrow, nodding "Yeah, maybe you're right," She put it on the string again and this time she didn't take that long to shoot. And like before she nearly hit the center of the target. I knew that if she shot a little faster that she'd still hit the target. She let her bow fall to her side and she turned to me "So, what do you think about that?"

I rubbed my hands together and say up, admitting "Not too bad, some of the best I've seen. Well, I shouldn't be saying that because I haven't seen someone shoot a bow and in such a long time."

"Maybe I could show you a couple of things, if you want," she walked over to the target and pulled out the two arrows that she had shot into the target "And you could show me something in return?" she brought the back over to the weapons rack and placed it in the exact spot it was resting before, along with the arrows where they were supposed to be "That's what a team does, help each other improve, right?"

"Yeah, exactly. They're already showing me a couple of stuff now, like show to summon my elemental dragon.

She raised an eyebrow "Elemental dragon?" she questioned, sounding as if she was oblivious to what they were. I guessed that it made sense because neither did I and neither of us were around the others to learn it when they did. I understood that all the others knew about them and learned it with the guys, which would explain why we didn't. I wonder why they hadn't learned it sooner because Wu must have known about it, since he worked with the masters before us and it would be crazy if they didn't know about them and could have actually summoned them themselves.

"I know, must sound crazy, huh? I don't learn about them myself until yesterday. I'm not the best one to explain it to you, the others should be the ones, but just to put it into simple terms based off of what I've learned: They're your elements represented dragon that's inside you waiting to be unlocked, like your true potential was, which you can eventually use to fly. They can explain it to you in greater depth, but that's the basics that will keep you from wondering too much about it. Should keep you sane till you learn the rest of it."

"Wait, it can seriously help you fly? Okay, that'd be awesome. Wait, what about you? You're the wind elemental so shouldn't you be able to fly in some sense?"

I shook my head "Nope," I told her "That thing I did earlier, it only allows me to go a certain height and for a certain about of time," some people who found out that I was a wind elemental right away assume that I can, but I reality I really can't. I can use it to jump really high sometimes like I did before. I used it as a driving force, as I would call it, to push me off of the ground. If I did it straight done I could potentially go higher depending on my current level of power, which also determined how long I could stay in the air for. Whenever I try to explain it to someone they always get confused so I just tell them what I told her to keep things as simple as I can.

"Oh. That's still cool though. It's some of the things that are unique to your element. Kind of like mine, and Griffin's, is speed that no one can reach even if they tried," now hearing it, I never really thought about that, how each of us had a special ability that the others didn't have. Like for me it was that I could use my powers to jump rather high or quickly force myself at something with it. The only exception for the jumping part was the master of gravity, since he could just levitate up when he manipulates gravity.

"I'm jealous of that, I bet everyone is," as I said that, I heard the door to the training area slide open to reveal all five of the guys. I smiled "it's about time you guys came back, too you long enough," I joked. We walked over to them and Lloyd, Cole, and Zane all looked rather surprised to see Shadow standing next to me. I had the feeling that the next few minutes were going to be some weird moments for the three of them, needing to hear everything that happened while they were gone.


	18. Chapter Eighteen: In Too Deep

Chapter Eighteen: In Too Deep

I sighed "You two seriously didn't tell them about what happened, did you?" I was a surprise to me that Kai and Jay didn't yell the three about what happened, I would have told them if I was there. They shook their heads, confirming that they didn't. "I'm gonna take it that you wanted us all to talk about, then?"

"Yeah," Kai told me. "It would be best to tell them when she was actually there too. That way she could answer any questions that they had."

"Okay, that makes sense," I admitted. We quickly told them what happened and how she came asking about the team, along with her wanting to possibly join the team. "Like I told Jay and Kai, I know that I probably don't have that big of a day in this, but I want you to hear me out. I think it'd be good, and why not do this now while you're still getting used to me being here? It'll be easier to get used to both of us, and one extra person isn't going to make that big of a difference compared to it just being me."

"I don't have a problem with it," Cole chimed in as if he didn't even need to think twice about his decision. Both Lloyd and Zane nodded in agreement which meant that all of us agreed and things would end up working out. I still thought at was a little weird about how fast things had went, it wasn't that long ago that she came here, and now joining the team. I wasn't sure how that was going to affect things but I knew that it wasn't going to be anything that wasn't manageable. If anything went wrong it'd be the guy's problem since they were the ones that were on the team the longest, so I didn't need to worry about cleaning up any messes. Cole turned to me and Shadow "Hey, why don't you two room together instead of Nya and Cass? It'd be better, because you two can bond better than if not, and it's be good for the both of you. Plus, I have the feeling that Nya wouldn't mind in the slightest.

"Thank God! Now I don't need to sleep in the same room as a snorer!" It's be good to sleep in a room that was free of any snoring, or I thought. "Wait, you don't snore, do you?"

As Shadow was about to respond, Kai cut her off "Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up there. My sister does not snore," I shook my head at him, internally laughing at the fact that he didn't realize his own sister snores, like a pig specifically. Seriously, it sounded like a pig screaming bloody murder, the biggest factor why I didn't want to sleep in that room anymore. It wouldn't stop me from being her friend though, she was a decent person underneath all of that snoring. "Okay, fine, maybe a little."

"And by a little you mean a lot, she snored a lot," I laughed, making the others laugh a little too, as well as Kai. "Well, anyways, what did you guys find?" I asked Lloyd, Cole, and Zane. All of a sudden I got curious as to what they discovered on their search, hopefully they found something useful. We needed some kind of explanation for what happened, even the littlest bit of informations would be helpful, as long as it got us somewhere. I was determined to find out what happened as well as find them so we could give the snakes an answer about what happened to the ones that went missing. Better yet I wanted to find them so we could tell them that they were perfectly fine.

The three's facial expressions went from calm to rather unsettling ones. It didn't take much for me to realize that they had bad things to inform us, and little good if any. "Uh, can we talk to the three of you in private?" Cole insisted, looking over to Shadow. "You should go introduce yourself to Wu, he's down the hall," he got a nod from her and we watched her leave.

"What happened?"

"Uh, we may have ran into something while we were there," Lloyd told us. I raised an eyebrow. What could they have run into near Jamanakai Village? There was barely anything there, besides the town and a bunch of rocks. We barely came into contact with any wildlife, so it didn't make sense that they would. "It's hard to explain. To put it into simple terms, we found them, but they weren't alone. They attacked us like they did that girl from yesterday, but when we defeated them, something came out of them."

"I scanned my database, and even I don't know what it was. It appeared to be a shadow person, one came out of each of them." Zane revealed, making my eyes widen.

"Wait, so you're saying some sort of shadow people did this?" I inquired. What did they mean by shadow people? I've heard of things like that when I was a kid but I've always thought that it was an urban legend. I had a bad feeling about all of this, it just left an unsettling feeling in my stomach. I could tell that the others were the same because they were all tense. "Do you think they had something to with the snakes attacking? It would explain why Scales didn't know anything about it."

"Actually, yeah I do. When we brought them back, they didn't try to attack anyone," Cole admitted.

"Did they say anything about the shadows?" Jay questioned.

Cole shook his head. "No, that's the thing. I think that they were in shock, for some reason. They didn't say anything, and one of them even freaked out."

"Damn," I clenched my fist, but calmed down and let it loses. That meant we had no information on these shadows, and the only ones that we know have encountered them can't even tell us anything about them, just our luck. What were we supposed to do now that we knew something was up, but had no leads? "Do you guys think that this is something worse than it appears to be? I mean, the shadow people have to mean something, right?"

"Yeah," Lloyd nodded, same with the others. It was good that I wasn't the only one who was thinking that, it meant that we were all on the same page. But what were we going to do? We had to look into things but we had no clue where to start. Were we just supposed to wait for something else to happen? At this point, that was the only thing that made sense and could actually work. We couldn't just go around Ninjago and search every nook and cranny and wait for something to come up, that just wouldn't work.

"What are we going to do? I know we're going to have to look more into this, but we've got nothing else to go off of. And I'm guessing that I'm not the only one who doesn't exactly want to search all of Ninjago for something else."

"There's nothing we can do," Kai chimed in. "We need to wait until something comes up, then we'll do something. Until then, we can just train or whatever. You, and now Shadow still need to learn how to summon your dragon, but that won't work until something happens that makes you have to, whenever you face a fear or a doubt. But we don't know what that will be so we'll just need to show you a couple of other things. Okay?"

"That's fine," I admitted. I still wished that I'd be able to learn it, but there could still have been a couple of things that I could learn from them. There even was a couple of things that I had in mind that I could show them, if they didn't already know it. Hm, I wondered if they knew about what Shadow said about how each of us, based on our element, has special abilities that others don't possess. Maybe we could all talk about it and try to see what all of ours are. I know for a fact that what I did earlier was one, but I couldn't think of many other things that could be something as well. "Oh, we've seriously got to kick box some time while training," I told Lloyd and Cole.

"Oh, you kick box too?" Cole raised an eyebrow.

"Yep, and I'm pretty good at it. Kai and Jay said that you and Lloyd do a little bit of kick boxing, I'd like to see what you can do," I told him. I was honestly interested to see how they were, and maybe I could actually have some people to practice with, it'd be a good change compared to before when it was just me. "Well, anyways, are we going to train at all today or what? Because I'm not sure if we are or not, since what happened today. I'd expect that we'd need to talk about it more, but there's nothing to talk about, and it's only two."

"I was thinking we could just do whatever the rest of the day, then pick up tomorrow," Jay suggested. We all nodded in agreement, ready for training in the morning. I couldn't wait till morning hit, because I was eager to see what training with them would be like. It'd be different than I thought because Shadow was here now and she'd be training with us as well. It was only one extra person, and the more people the better. It'd be great to finally get to train with other people and not just alone, maybe I'd learn more than I was expecting to.


	19. Chapter 19: It's Just Between You and Me

Chapter Nineteen: Just Between You and Me.. and Cake

Not a lot of time passed since when the six of us talked and I couldn't stop thinking about those so called shadow people. It just left an uneasy feeling in my stomach that just wouldn't go away, and I hated it. I knew that something was out there but that made things worse, I couldn't do anything while I knew that something had to be done. We had no clue what it was so I wasn't sure what to expect out of all of this. Was it going to be something simple, was it going to be life risking, or was it going to be nothing at all? All of the questions continued to race through my mind, so I decided to make myself some lunch in attempt to get my mind off of things.

I opened the door to the fridge and scanned the various foods inside. There wasn't anything good, other than some leftover chinese food. Since there wasn't anything else that looked appealing to me I decided to take that. I grabbed it and brought it over in the microwave oven that they had, and let it start cooking. I sighed, hoping that it wouldn't take so long because I hadn't eaten all day and I was pretty hungry. The smell slowly filled the room, which for some reason managed to attract Cole into the room. "What you cooking? Smells like the leftover chinese food we got as take out a couple nights ago."

"Yep, that's exactly what it is," I told him. I leaned against the counter, sighing again. "What are you doing here?" I questioned him, curious why he came into the kitchen. Maybe he was hungry too? It made the most sense to me.

"Smelt the chinese food cooking, so I was wondering who was in here. Plus, I thought I might as well get some food while I was in here, kind of hungry," He admitted. Just as I thought, he was hungry as well. Like I did before, he went over to the fridge, then gasped "M-My Cake!" He exclaimed. "It's gone! Someone ate it!" he kept digging through the fridge, this time frantically, before pulling away and looking over to me. "Tell me you didn't eat it."

I gulped, starting to feel a little bit guilty that I did eat it. I wanted to tell him the truth, I couldn't lie to him, but I didn't want to see what happened if I told him that it was me who ate it. He didn't exactly seem like he was joking when he told me about how Jay ate it once and he sent him to the hospital. "Um," I tried to take advantage about the few extra moments. I frowned, but nodded "Yeah, I didn't know it was yours. It was just sitting there, and I couldn't not eat it. I'm sorry," I just couldn't bring myself to lie, no chance in hell would I lie to any of them.

We shared a quick moment of awkward silence, and I could see the anger in his eyes, which slowly went away. He sighed "If it wasn't your first time eating my cake, I'd be pissed, but not this time," he told me. "I'll let it slide, this one time, got that?"

I stood silent for a couple of seconds, but nodded "Yeah, I just couldn't resist though!"

He couldn't help but laugh. "I see you're a fellow Cake lover too, huh?" he casually questioned me, still laughing a bit, which seemed to be more on the chuckle side at this point. I gave him a nod. "Doesn't mean you'll be getting my cake any time soon."

"Wasn't expecting it… Wait, do you smell that?" all of a sudden I could smell something burning, my god don't tell me "The food!" I could see the food burning, not to a crisp, but it was clearly burnt. I quickly grabbed an oven mitt and took it out, frowning at the poor food that I managed to burn. It was just like the waffles a burned the other day! "Damnit, burnt my food again," I glanced over at Cole who was raising an eyebrow at me. "What? Never seen someone who burns almost everything they cook?

"Uh, it's not that, I've just never seen someone else who burns food. I can't cook either. They boys say I couldn't cook to save my life," was he serious? He couldn't cook either? I thought I was the only one. Like, I can cook some things, like Mac and cheese and spaghetti O's. I can't even cook hot dogs right: I cook them in the microwave and always manage to blow them up.

"Cole!" We heard someone yell from the hallways, and saw Jay pop his head through the door "What did you burn this time?

We stared at him for a moment before I broke the silence "It wasn't him, it was me, and it was some leftover Chinese food."

I could see Jay's jaw drop, him obviously being surprised that it was me who burnt the food, and not Cole. "Seriously?! Someone burnt the food other than Cole?" the two of us gave him a nod as he walked over to Cole and gave him a pat on the back. "Well, buddy, looks like you've got some competition on being the worst cook around. At least your not the only one.

"Hey," I whined. "I can cook, like Mac and Cheese and Spaghetti O's, so don't say I can't," I told him. I wasn't going to sit around and listen to someone insult my cooking. Yeah, it was bad, but that doesn't mean it was right to rub it in my face. I'd rather just forget about it, same with him, and go on with my life. I'd just not cook again: problem solved. I threw the burnt food into the trash and the oven mitt into the sink. "Well, so much for having Chinese food for lunch," I saw a conveniently placed bag of chips on the counter, and grabbed them. "These'll have to do, better than nothing,"

"We've seriously got to tell Zane that he's the only one that's allowed to cook."

"You've said that a thousand times, Jay," Cole sighed, starting to push him out of the kitchen and back out into the hallway. "Why don't you go tell him that now? Tell them others while you're at it," I could just hear the irritation in his voice as he said that, Jay must have specifically told Cole that a lot because even I wouldn't say it that annoyed. I had no objections to Zane being the one to cook, though, I had the feeling that he was the best cook around. If someone else was better they would have had them cook last night instead of Zane, so that's not a bad guess. "As much as I hate to admit it, Zane is a better cook that all of us, by a lot."

"Can't wait for the next time he cooks, then," I joked.

"Same. I would never pass up Zane's cooking, not a chance." he told me. "Now, you should give me those chips."

He attempted to grab them the chips bag out of my hand, but I pulled my hand away and for some reason used my other hand to block his face. "Nope," I told him, my hand just awkwardly being on his face and the bag still in my other. We stood there for a moment before I pulled my hand away "We can either share the chips or neither of us can have it."

"Not taking any chances, I'll agree to that. "

"Fair enough," luckily there was just enough for two servings, so we could split it up evenly between the two of us. "I'm gonna go watch a movie after this, so I get the bag," I was about to pore a plate of the chips for him before he interrupted me.

"What movie?"

"Either Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Star Wars, I can't decide. But why do you ask?"

"You should totally let me watch it too, or should I say them. If you can't decide, then why not both?" Cole suggested.

I raised an eyebrow at him wanting to watch a movie with me, but I nodded "Oh, that's fine. And yeah, that's actually a good idea, to be honest," I didn't even think about watching both movies, this way I didn't just end up watching one. "If that's the case, then we can just use the bag, we wouldn't be wasting a plate," I put the plate back where I got it and turned to Cole "Just a heads up, the movies are on my computer. There not illegally downloaded, though! I've either bought them or given them."

"That's fine, as long as the screen is big enough to see."

"Yeah," I began to say before I remembered something "Oh, hey, before we get those movies going I've gotta go out my stuff in the new room. Give me ten and I'll be ready to go. Don't eat the chips before the movie!" I turned to leave and jogged back to the room to grab my stuff, putting it all in my bags to carry it all in. Nya still wasn't there so I decided that I'd just tell her later. Shadow and I both agreed on the room next to hers, across from Cole and Kai's, and the one that was diagonal from Jay and Zane. Lloyd was lucky because he got his own room next to Cole and Kai's, I'd kill for my own room!

When I got into the new room I noticed that it was empty, then I realized that she didn't even bring any of her stuff. Maybe she was gone getting it all now? Yeah, that made the most sense. Like before, I put all my clothes in one of the drawers, but this time up put my art stuff under my bed. I put my laptop case on my bed and took it out, along with the charger. "Alright, movie time," I smiled and met Cole out in the living room. I put on Texas chainsaw massacre first, hoping that I could watch more than one Star Wars, it'd be awesome if I could watch all three of the Original trilogy. I always loved that one better, but I still enjoyed the new one.

The two of us enjoyed the movies, and it was honestly a great way to start my time here: getting to enjoy some movies with at least one of the guys. We managed to bond a little in the short amount of time. I found out that he does some art stuff too, but he paints instead of draw (something I couldn't do to save my life). He also listens to the same kind of music as me: Rock music. I found it kind of ironic because his element was earth, and rocks... Yep definitely ironic. By rock music was probably the best music genre out there. Hook me up with some Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, Sick Puppies, and Starset and I'm good to go! Don't forget that he kickboxes a little like I do. I wasn't sure why, but I had the feeling that we'd make easy friend, maybe even best friends one of these days.


	20. Chapter 20: All In The Heart and Mind

Chapter Twenty: All In The Mind And Heart

AN~ sorry that I'm skipping a little bit of time, I've just been going slowly (time wise) in the story and I wanted to speed things up a little. Just a brief explanation: in the time that's passed they've trained for about three weeks and Cass and Shadow have gotten closer to the guys and Nya.

(Time skip: Three weeks)

I put my hands on my knees to catch my breath before standing up straight again and getting into my battle ready stance like before. "Come on, you can do better than that Shadow, can't you?" I gestured my hands in taunting manner at Shadow, showing that I wanted more of a challenge in the spar. I was determined to win this sparring match, like she was, and wouldn't stop at anything to be victorious. She ran at me, ready to punch me, but I grabbed her flying fist and stopped her. I flipped her over my shoulder. On her way down she pulled me down with me causing the both of us to fall to the ground. I payed there for a moment before getting out and holding out a hand to help her up.

"Thanks," she thanked me, accepting my help and pulling herself back up. I found it a little ironic that we both ended up falling on the floor, and that it ended up being a tie. She never really came across this while sparring, it was rare for her to see, but this time it managed to be that way. "Hey, nice match. I can tell that you've been getting better since our first spar three weeks ago."

"Yeah," I nodded "Same to you. You've gotten quicker since then, quicker than you already were," I was surprised that I was actually able to improve just after three weeks, I thought that it'd take at least two months to see even the littlest bit of progress. I guess they coming and training with a group did benefit my training in some way. Good thing I didn't turn down the offer three weeks ago, or I wouldn't be progressing in training like I was since I did. "There's still a couple of things that they've still got to show us, from what I'm seeing," for one thing, they were telling us that they'd show us spinjitzu, but that was over a week ago. "I swear to god if they don't teach us spinjitzu today, I'm gonna flip a table."

"I know," she agreed with me. "That one of the things that I'm the most excited to learn and it really sucks that they haven't even brought it up in the past week and a half. I just wanna learn it already. Just imagine what it'd be like if we knew spinjitzu too! I mean, not a lot of people can say that they know it. It's just be one more thing that we could impress people with."

I scratched the back of my head "It would be nice, but I mostly want to learn because I want some new fighting techniques. I can actually think of a couple of things right now that I could do," I told her. I knew that once I knew spinjitzu that it'd be a whole new fighting experience for me. There was no doubt that it's increase my fighting skills and improve my chances of winning a fight in battle. It seemed to be a great skill to use as a defense like thing: you use it to knock an opponent down before hitting the finishing blow.

"What's this I hear about spinjitzu?" We heard, and turned our heads to see Zane walking into the room. "Do you two want to learn it now?" He questioned.

"Well yeah," I admitted "You guys said that you'd show us how you guys do it over a week ago, and we think that it'd be a good time to do this now," I was hoping that he'd agree to teaching us it, even if it was just him I'd be satisfied. It's not like we needed all five of them to teach us, it was just important that we had at least one person here to show us the ways of the art of spinjitzu. "What do you say about that."

"I agree that it's a good time they you two learn it, but there's a problem," he told us, making both Shadow and I to raise an eyebrow. How what's there a problem with it when he said that it was a good time to show us? "You two already know spinjitzu. Just a little hint: remember your training in the training course," with that, he left, leaving Shadow and I dumbfounded.

A couple of seconds passed before we looked at each other "What the heck does he mean by remember your training in the training course?" Shadow asked as if I had a clue as to what he meant. I wasn't even sure what he was referring to myself... Until a lightbulb went off in my head. "What's that look for?" She asked, clearly seeing the smile on my face from realization of what he meant.

"I think he was talking about the training course itself. I mean, training in the training course has to mean how we trained while using it. It makes sense, you have to admit," I slowly started to make sense, what we were supposed to to. Maybe if we just practiced on the training course it would just done to us, it was most likely that we needs to be aware of it and actually needed to try to learn it ourselves. It made sense, what else could Zane be referring to? If there was something else then we were really oblivious because I had no clue about what else to think or do to learn spinjitzu.

"Maybe you're right," she nodded in agreed before laughing "Then we should take a spin at it then."

"Whoa, please, no puns. We've got enough coming from him as it is, we don't need any more," I had to admit, it was better than some of Jay's, but that didn't mean that it wasn't cheesy. A lot of puns were cheesy and it was hard to come by ones that are actually worthy of being said. "But yeah, we should get to it now. I'm pumped up and ready to try this thing out," I got a nod of agreement from her, and we didn't hesitate to head over to the training course. I pressed the large button to start it up and watched it come to life right before us. "Alright, we've got this. Just go through it and give it your all, and things should work their magic."

I stepped up first, volunteering to be the first one to try. I took a deep breath and got ready to run "Alright, I've got this," I told myself, trying to keep up my confidence. As long as I could manage to keep it up I could do it, I always performed the best when I did. I dashed through each part and put my full concentration into successfully performing spinjitzu. I took note of everything I did, and at the end put it into actions and before I knew it I saw a little bit of Purple around me. I was able to maintain a spinjitzu tornado (or whatever you want to call it) before it vanished and I fell to the ground. "Damn it."

"Nice!" I heard Shadow yell across the room, before she started to run through the course as well. She went a little faster through the course than I did, and she was able to perform a little bit of spinjitzu too. I gave her a thumbs up when she couldn't anymore and she returned the thumbs up. "That's easier than I thought it would."

"Yeah, same," I told her before adding "I'm not sure about you but I'm going to try it without the training course," I walked into an open part of the room and looked around, picturing the course as if it was really there. I ran through and imagined myself going through, able to hold the tornado for even longer than before. "aha!" I was actually able to keep it steady with no problem.. Until I crashed into a wall. I crashed into the wall and fell back and into the ground. I stood myself up and stretched "Oops," I felt as if I could maintain spinjitzu, I just needed to practice controlling it.

"How'd you do that?" Shadow questioned, so I explained to her how I just pictured the training course than and just went with the flow. "Okay, got it," after a minute or two she was able to perform some spinjitzu and maintain it like I did just before her. "Awesome!" she jumped out of her neon green spinjitzu tornado and landed next to me. "We gotta tell the others! I can't believe I just did spinjitzu! So did you!"

"Whoa, calm down there."

"Sorry, I'm just really excited. But let's go, I wanna tell Lloyd about this!" Before I could stop her she was already running down the hall brag to the others about what had just happened. I sighed but just followed behind, not in a rush like she was. I thought for a moment and realized that I'd learn even more here than I had originally anticipated. I had a great place to train, better people to train with, and the best people to become my friends. In the past three weeks I've grown closer to them than with people I've known for years (not including my sister) and I couldn't ask for better friend and teammates.


	21. Chapter Twenty One: The Dark Half

Chapter Twenty One: The Dark Half

Whoa, you guys seriously did some spinjitzu?" Jay questioned, it wasn't really hard to tell that he was rather shocked that we were able to on the first go. I wasn't exactly sure how they went through training, and how long it took, but I was guessing that it took them a little time to master it. I was willing to bet that he was starting to think that we got it down right off the bat, but I couldn't call it that. I informed him that it wasn't perfect. but it was a good start. "Oh, okay. Well, it's going to take a little time to master. It took us a while to, just so you know."

"That's good to know," I admitted. Like I expected, it wouldn't be easy to master it at first and would end up taking a little bit of time to do so. I was about to ask them about how long it took them to learn it themselves until I was interrupted by the loud buzzing noise of some kind of alarm. "Uh, should I be worried?" I had the feeling that it wasn't going off for just some random reason, but for something important.

"Most likely, yeah," Nya told me as she checked the red glowing bracelet on her wrist, which she used to bring up some kind of holographic screen. A map of Ninjago popped up in front of us, and a red light flashing where Ninjago City was on the map. "Something's in Ninjago City, and it's something big! And what ever it is, is all over ninjago! " she exclaimed. I had the feeling that this had something to do with the shadows that came up a few weeks ago, what else could it be? "You think the shadows are back?"

"I don't doubt it," Cole said. As I fears, that's what was the most obvious and what everyone else was thinking. "We need to split up into teams and cover as much ground as possible!" We all agreed to that, deciding to slip up into groups of four: Kai, Nya, Lloyd and Shadow. And Zane, Jay, Cole, and I.

We all got a closer look at the map until I noticed something. I gestured my hand around the entire map "Hey, they're at two locations. We can take the north, you guys take the south," they nodded in agreement. Before I knew it we were off, and unfortunately I still had to ride on the back of one of the guy's dragon. I stuck with Cole because i didn't want to get shocked by Jay's again and I didn't want to see what Zane's resulted in. Yeah, Coles left me with an uncomfortable ride but that best being shocked and having frostbite by the time you got there.

It didn't take that long for us to reach Ninjago City, and when we got there we split up into the two teams we agreed on, and we headed north. "I just realized that you guys never told us about what these shadows can do exactly, as in how they fight," I told Cole and Zane. I wasn't sure if they learned anything about them, as in their fighting styles or anything along those lines, and if they did I was hopeful that they'd shared anything with Jay and I. I mean, why wouldn't they?

"We didn't learn much. We saw them come out of the snakes, but that's about it. The thing is, they didn't even try to fight us, which is why I'm worried," Cole told us. I wasn't sure what to make of that, it had to mean something if they didn't fight. And with the idea of them coming out of the snakes had to mean something too. They obviously had control over them somehow, which is what worried me the most. I'd never heard of something like that so I wasn't exactly sure what to think at this point.

"Then we'd better keep our guard up," I suggested. It was the best idea since none of us knew what to expect. We'd be somewhat ready to face up against whatever they threw at us which could be anything at this point. "I have the feeling that that's why the snakes were acting so weird, because of the shadows," I admitted. "You said how you saw them come out of the snakes, right? It sounds to me as if they're possessing them. What do you guys think? It makes the most sense, seeing all the facts we know so far."

"It's a fair guess, but we should find out why before we draw any conclusions," Zane chimed in. I agreed with him, but the shadows being able to take over someone was something that would still be on the top of my list of suspicions here. I still thought that was the case, but I wouldn't come to any conclusions until I knew more. At the corner of my eye I saw something come out of his arm, and I glanced over to see a metal bird. "I'll send the falcon out to get an aerial view of the city," he let the thing fly away, and I just stared at it in confusion. Did I see that right… It came out of his arm? I just shrugged it off and didn't think much more of it, and instead looked down on the town.

"Down there," Jay pointed over to a spot with a couple of destroyed building, along with smoke… No it was something different. It was dark and a blackish gray color, just like smoke, but it still didn't look like it exactly. I got a better look at it as we grew closer and realized that it was shadows, a big cloud of shadows.

"What the hell," I murmured to myself, I didn't know what to make of it, but there was no doubt in my mind that there were some of the shadows there, there was no way that it was a coincidence that something bad was attacking Ninjago City and a big cloud of shadows where it was happening. The three landed their dragons and we all jumped off, and looked at the cloud of shadows surrounding us. "Okay we need to cover as much ground as possible and find out what is causing this."

"Right," Cole nodded. "Cass, you're with me. Jay you go with Zane. Stay close to each other and search every single inch of this area, got that?"

"Yep," the two nodded and ran off in the opposite directions that we started heading in.

"Okay, so we're looking for these shadow things, correct?" I questioned and got a nod from Cole. "Okay, got it," we continued to run and tried to avoid any clouds of darkness so we could see what was around us. For a while nothing caught our eyes, so I began to wonder if we were even going run into anything. That was until the shadows around us started to move closer in on us and trapped us in a barrier of shadow. "Cole, stick together, we don't know what's causing this, and I'm not sure I want to find out."

"Wasn't thinking about it," he told me as we stood pretty much back to back. I looked around and put my hands in defense, ready to fight what ever came out at us. "We know you're out there, might as well come out now!" I heard Cole yell out into the darkness in hopes that who or whatever was causing the shifting of the shadows to come out like he demanded.

Things remained quiet for a moment until a small portion of the shadows started to clear, revealing a young girl who I suspected to be around my age. Her long black hair was mostly covered with a light gray hood. "I was wondering where the fun was, I've been getting bored of looking for you guys," she smirked. There was no doubting that she was the one behind all of this, and the one controlling the shadows. The questions were: how and why?

"Who are you?" I demanded an answer, and wasn't going to let her go anywhere until she gave us one, along with answers for the million other questions I had for her. I created a sphere of wind around my fists, same with Cole but with earth, and stared at the silent girl in front of us. "I said: Who are you? I want an answer!"

"You don't need to get hostile," she told me in a rather calm voice, one that was too calm for my liking. She was there for less than a minute and she was already pissing me off. "I'm the elemental master of darkness: Kiara Hartley."

"Why are you doing this?" I questioned.

She just laughed and continued smirking "I'm trying to bring back my master!" She told us, making me wonder who the hell her master was. I wasn't sure what to make of that but I knew that it couldn't be good. "All I need are a few things and then I can make it happen! And I'm not gonna let anyone get in my way! I will bring Alvah back if it's the last thing I do!" I could see the anger in her eyes before she moved the shadows around us and made them surround us completely.

The shadows were pitch black and prevented me from seeing anything. "Cass, where are you?!" I could hear Cole's voice call out to me in the void but I couldn't tell which way it was coming from.

"Cole, I'm over here!" I called back. I couldn't see anything around me, I was left waving my hands in front of me in order to find Cole in it. My hands his something, and I felt it to see what it was, which ended up being his hair. "Sorry!" I claimed before adding "We need to stick together and find a way out of here."

I grabbed into the back of his shirt, gripping it tight and not letting go, knowing we could get separated in the darkness if I did. "We need to find the others and fast," he said as we walked out of the big blinding cloud of shadows. I nodded, and soon we found a source of light.

"Finally," I looked around and right away spotted Zane not that far from us. "Zane!" I ran after him, Cole close behind, and stopped behind him. "Zane, you won't believe what just happened, we need to tell the others and fast!" I told him, but he didn't move at all. He was just standing there faced away from us. "Hey, you okay?"

"I'm just fine," he implied, still facing the other way. A chill went down my spine for some reason I couldn't explain, I felt as if something was off. The way he said I'm just fine seemed off. I raised an eyebrow at him jogged over to him and turned him around, as he wouldn't himself, and back up when I saw what was standing in front of me. He quickly made an ice ball in his hand and threw it at me but I dodged it.

"What the hell Zane!" I snapped, what the hell was he doing? And why was he… like he was? His normal icy blue eyes were white and the glare he was giving me was almost devilish. "What's wrong with you!" I demanded. I knew something was wrong with him, he wasn't fine like he claimed to be, he was anything but fine. His eyes were just full of hate, and I wasn't sure why.

Cole ran up beside me and looked at Zane, his eyes widening. "Zane-" he started to say until we saw some kind of black tint in his eyes behind all of the white. No, don't tell me, was he… He had to have been possessed by one of the shadows from before. I now knew that that Kiara girl could control them somehow, her being the master of Darkness and all, she did this to him.

He was going to run up to him but I blocked him with my arm. "Don't he's possessed by one of the shadows," I snarled at him, or rather the shadow that was taking over his body. I wasn't sure what to do, because I hadn't had much experience with these shadows if any at all.

I jump back, startled, when Jay jumped in front of us. "Guys, you need to go. I saw what happened to him, and you need to get out of here and tell the others about what happened," he told us. "We're not getting anywhere if he's chasing us, I'm gonna hold him back while you guys go. Don't argue with me, there's no time to do that. So just go!"

I looked at him and Zane, then over at Cole, waiting to see what he did. I wasn't sure what to do because I didn't just want to leave Jay there alone, we had no clue what these shadows could do. Before I could actually react Cole grabbed my wrist and started pulling me with him as he ran away. "We can't just leave Jay!" I yelled at Cole, trying to pull away from his strong grip.

It was no use, he just held onto my wrist even tighter and there was no way he was going to let go any time soon. "You heard what he said, we need to tell the others. This is something big and we can't risk not getting back to the others and not telling them," after hearing his argument I gave up, he had a valid point. Everything that happened in the last fifteen minutes proved that this was something far worse than we expected, and we had to tell the others, and we couldn't stop until we brought this information back to Sensei and the others to figure out what we were going to do. Sensei was bound to know what to do, I've learned that he's good with this kind of stuff.


	22. Chapter Twenty Two: Pieces of the Past

Chapter Twenty Two: Pieces of the Past

Cole and I got far enough from Zane and Jay to stop and take a quick rest, giving me time to process what has just happened. I let it all race through my mind: there's a new villain who turned out to be the Master of Shadows, she did something to Zane (which was what happened to be what she did to the snakes three weeks ago), and Jay stayed behind to stand up against Zane and who know how that's gonna end. I was worried for his sake, along with Zanes, and wasn't sure what was going to happen. What if the shadows got to Jay too? A better questions was, why was one taking over Zane? Why was he so important that one possessed him? I took a deep breath and ran my hands through my hair, my eyes shifting to look over at Cole. "I-I can't believe what just happened. With Zane... And Jay."

"Same," he admitted, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Come on, we need to find the others and tell them. Sensei needs to know about this, he's bound to know what this is about. He always does, there's almost nothing he doesn't have an answer for," I had the feeling that he was scared or doubtful because he would have summoned his elemental dragon by now so we could move faster, but he didn't. He was smart, so he would have thought of that. He didn't ask me to try because I couldn't.

"Yeah, right," I nodded as we continued to run. We weren't even sure where we were going, we had no clue where the others were. That was why we needed a dragon so that we could search from above, it's raise the chances of finding them. I was scared myself, but I knew that I couldn't let the fear overpower me. I was just as determined as I was scared, maybe even more, and determination could always overpower the fear. I tried to focus in attempt to summon my dragon, it was the only thing that I was thinking of. I wasn't sure about Cole but I could see a dim purple light around me, I couldn't believe that it was actually working. "Hey Cole," I spoke up when a huge dragon former under me. "It's about time we left on a dragon."

He stopped and looked at me with shock, probably from surprised of me summoning the dragon. It was big and a nice dark shade of purple, with grayish vain like things going down its back. "How can you do that? Aren't you scared?" He questioned. I shook my head, accepting that I was scared. The trick that I saw was you needed to control the fear. You could still be scared but if you set your mind to something you can control it and summon the dragon.

My dragon stretched its wingspan, releasing a gust of wind on us, before relaxing them. "Come on, you gonna summon your dragon or what, cake boy?" He nodded and slowly summoned his own. Our dragons roared at each other before going back to their own business, what ever elemental dragons did. "Okay, let's go," I let the dragon fly, followed by Cole, and finally got a good glimpse of the city. Some other parts were covered with shadows, but a majority was cleared of them. We flew for a few minutes before I spotted the other group. "Down there," I pointed down and we landed near them.

They all looked at us, and Lloyd spoke up "Where were you guys?! We've been searching for you for a while now!" I could tell that he, along with the other three, were worried about us for reasons I didn't get, we weren't gone that long. "And where's Jay and Zane?"

Cole and I exchanged looks, and he was probably wondering what to say to them. How could we just casually tell them what happened, and that they were both probably in the hands of Kiara or something along the lines of that. "Uh," I tried to think of what to tell them without freaking them out, but at this point that was close to impossible to accomplish. I just frowned "The shadows got to Zane, and Jay stayed back so we could tell you something important."

They all looked at us in shock, and their facial expressions soon turned into worried looks. "What?" Nya questioned, concern evident in her voice. I could tell that all four of them were both confused and concerned, most likely processing what I just said. "Did you see what happened to Jay?"

"No," Cole shook his head. "We did what he wanted and came to find you guys. Last we saw he was ready to hold back Zane, we have no clue what happened to him," hearing him say it made me feel worse than I already was. What if something bad did happen to him, or worse, he got possessed by one of those shadows like Zane did? Either way, I was afraid to find out what. We need to get back to Sensei and tell him everything, though. Cass and I will go, you guys finish up here and stay alert. This girl Kiara can control the Shadows and make them take over you," Cole advised them.

We created our dragons again, and looked on the others. Before we were ready to go Kai stopped us. "Be careful yourselves and the Sensei everything you know," they looked at each other until they exchanged nods and the group ran off.

I looked over to Cole. "Alright, let's go. We need to tell him as soon as we can, I want to know what he knows about this, he's bound to know a lot about it," we let our dragons take off and fly as fast as their wings could take them. For some reason my dragon was faster than Coles, probably being a wind based dragon and more in tune with the air. I kept my focus on flying and never took my eyes off of the sky in front of me. It took us less time to get back since we were in more of a hurry than we were to get to the City.

I didn't hesitate to let our dragons vanish and dash into the monastery. We looked down the halls and ran to Wu's meditation room where we left him before we left. "We've got some bad news, Sensei," Cole declared. We ran behind him and he turned to us, raising an eyebrow and waiting for an explanation. "At Ninjago City, we ran into this girl who was claiming to be the Elemental Master of Darkness. We found out that she was controlling the shadows this whole time."

"That's not all," I added. "She was telling us that she wants to resurrect some demon. She said it's name was Alvah. You have to know something about that, right? Anything at all?" He looked at him in hopes that he did know something and that he'd tell us. I wanted to know what to expect out of this, and if we didn't know anything about this then we would be off to a pretty bad start.

"I sensed something bad like this would happen," he addressed as he stood up to face us. "Alvah is the demon of shadows, one of the greatest evils Ninjago ever faces a long time ago. My father banished him to hell when he knew that he could never stop him. He's pure darkness and can put out even the greatest of light. It's said that he was consumed by the shadows down in hell, seeing his own defeat."

I looked over at Cole with a concerned expression, we couldn't let that happen. We needed to figure out how to stop her before could manage to bring him back and keep Ninjago going through hell like it sounds like it did when he was last here. "Is there anything else? Do you know how she plans on doing this?" Cole wondered. Maybe if he knew how she was, we'd have a fighting chance.

"In fact I do," he started to explain. "It's said that with the elemental essence of five elemental masters. Once they're consumed with darkness part of their elemental essence can be taken from them and used to bring him back."

My eyes widened. "Then that means," I froze. I remembered what happened to Zane, we knew that he was possessed by a shadow, maybe that's what he means by consumed by darkness. He was an elemental master and it'd make sense for her to use her shadows to take over him. She already had one, and possibly even two if she got to Jay, and that wasn't good. "She's got Zane and most likely Jay too. She only needs three more. The others are still there, we need to go and get them out of there!"

"What? They're still there? You can't let her get them too."

Cole nodded and looked over to me. "Looks like we're going back. We need to get them before she does," I nodded and the two of us ran back outside and mounted our dragons once more. I knew that we shouldn't have left them, we should have taken them with us when we had the chance. I swear to god if the same thing happened to any of them as with Zane, I'd feel guilty about it.

Back at the city the two of us started calling out for the others in hopes of finding them safe and sound. "Kai, Jay, Nya! Anyone?!" I kept yelling but it was no use. Minutes passed until we were finally able to find someone. We landed and ran up to Shadow and Lloyd. "Guys! Thank god you guys are safe. Where are the others?"

"We split up, why?" Shadow questioned, looking rather confused as to why I was panicking. I explained to the what Sensei told Cole and I and the two of them seemed just as concerned as we did. "Oh my god, that's bad! Then we need to go find them. I'll be right back, I know where they went," Shadow told us before running off at top speed and coming back, dragging Nya and Kai along with her.

"Hey, why'd you do that?" Kai pulled away from her grip and looking over at us. "You guys are back," I just got to the chase and told him and Nya what we found out to get it out of the way. It was good that we all knew about it so we could at least have a chance at avoiding getting taken too. "We couldn't find Jay."

"Damn it," I heard Cole mutter to himself. I could tell that he was pissed that they couldn't. Was he feeling guilty like I was for leaving him behind like we did? We should have stayed with him that whole time, or at least one of us so that the other could have left to tell the others. Now thinking about it that second thing would have proven to be a better plan, it made the most sense now.

We stood there silent for a second before I broke it "We need to go now. There's nothing more we can do here, and it's not worth wasting our energy. I know that we still haven't found Jay but he would have wanted us to go and figure this thing out. We can find him later, but for now we need to leave and decide what to do."


	23. Chapter Twenty Three: Fix You

Chapter Twenty Three: Fix You

We all knew that there wasn't anything else we could to in the city so we all agreed to going back to the monastery. Our top priority was discussing everything that we just learned and to decide what we were going to do. We couldn't just leave things like they were and do nothing, we had no clue what could happen. Based off of the few things I knew about this Alvah thing, we couldn't let it get out or Ninjago would be in serious trouble. I know that the guys and Nya have been through things like this, things that have been huge like it, so they probably had a better understanding of it and how hard it could get. They all looked concerned, and clueless as if they were completely oblivious to what we were supposed to do, so I was 95% sure that anything that happened would be a struggle. If someone who's used to this is concerned then it means there won't be any completely smooth sailing.

I saw that like I did Shadow unlocked her dragon as well. Hers was a little smaller than mine, and was a darkish grey color with a neon green stripe like pattern on it's back. I've noticed exactly how different each of our dragons were from each other, they all had their own special properties (relating to it's represented element) that made it different from the others. Some of the differences were noticeable, such as her dragon being smaller, most likely so it had less weight to weigh it down which allowed it to go faster than other dragons. Then others like mine didn't, one of the special things about mine was that it was able to maneuver through the air better than others because it was the wind dragon, and wind was better in tune with air than any other elemental which could come in handy while dodging things.

The whole ride back was quiet, we were all pretty shaken up from what happened not too long before. Even though we knew what happened I could tell that we were all still trying to process it all, not fully understanding. I wasn't even sure if that's what the problem was, I had the feeling that each and every one of us couldn't believe it and didn't want it to be true. For one of your friends to be turned against you and the other to go missing in a period of only a few hours wasn't an easy thing to handle. It just felt weird. This morning we were all having a great time, laughing at breakfast and everything, and now this is happening. It's just that it was happening so quickly so it was hard to accept all at once. We just needed some time to think, then we'd be able to talk about it.

Like I expected, when we got back some of us did need some time to think about what happened. Most of us left to get some time alone to think, leaving Cole, Lloyd, Shadow, and I to talk. I looked at them all, but they all remained quiet. I sighed "We need to talk about it eventually, if we want to make a plan," I told them, knowing that somewhere deep down inside of them they were thinking the same thing. There was no chance that they didn't even think that at all, even when you're scared or worried you have to be aware you need to take action eventually. They'd be idiots to not be be pondering about at least one thing relating to the events happening, and what we could possibly do to resolve it. "I know you guys are still processing what happened, but we can't just sit around.

"I know, it's just," Lloyd started before pausing to think for a moment, and continued "I don't know what to do. I never heard of this elemental master, so I'm not sure what she's capable of. And on top of that, she's trying to bring back an evil that my grandfather banished, and I'm not sure what's going to happen. None of us are. We just need some time to think, that's all, then we'll talk about it."

I got that none of us knew what to think or what was going to happen but that's why we needed to talk about it. It wasn't going to be any use keeping our thoughts to ourselves, we needed to talk it out as a group, not as individuals. We were a team and teams were supposed to get through things together. "I understand what you're getting at," I admitted "But we're not going to get anywhere unless we work together as a team. That's what we are, aren't we?"

The three of them exchanged looks before looking back at me. "You're right," Cole agreed with me. "I know it sucks, but there's not getting them back until then, so we'd better start discussing a plan while it's still early in the game."

"I know that," Shadow spoke up. "I just can't believe what happened with Zane. I have the feeling that the same thing ended up happening to Jay. What if it happens to one of the rest of us?" she frowned and looked down on the ground, kicking a rock that happened to be right next to her foot.

I saw Lloyd wrap his arm around her shoulder, comforting her "It's going to be fine. I'm not going to let anything happen to you guys," he smiled at her, getting one back from her. "We'll get through this without a problem, we always do," be rubbed her arm with the hand wrapped around her and pulled away, still flashing her a smile. "Just give the others, say, a half an hour and then we'll talk. That okay with you guys?" He questioned, putting away from Shadow.

Shadow and Cole nodded, same with me. "Yeah, that's fine. They can think about it and maybe we'll talk about more stuff if we do that than if we were to just talk now. They'll get it all through their minds, hopefully all of it, and will be better prepared to talk then," I watched Shadow and Lloyd gave small nods and walked out of the room together, leaving Cole and I alone. I looked over at him and I could tell that he was pretty hurt because of what happened. "Hey," I spoke up "I have the feeling that you're blaming yourself for what happened, us losing Jay like that, along with Zane. Just don't let it eat away at you, it's not your fault. If you won't believe that, know that I played some part in it too."

With a frown still visible on his face he looked up at me. "I know that it's not all my fault, that's not the problem. It's just that they're like brothers to me and I can't believe that they're gone like they are. They were they're one moment and gone the next," he paused his speech, making me curious what else he was thinking. I knew that it was a lot, there was no doubt that he was.

"I know that I haven't know them as long as you have," I started with a small chuckle "The time I have is nothing compared to the time that you've known them for. I probably don't deserve to be saying this as much as you do, but I want to find them. I want to get them back and make sure that they're okay, it's hurt me to see them get hurt. I know it's a possibility but I'm trying not to think about that, but rather the idea that there's still a chance to get them back and safe for real. But we're going to get them back, things are going to end okay."

I saw a couple of tears fall from his face, him crying "I just want them to be okay. I know that I could have done something back there," my expression went from serious to sorry, I'd never take him as the one to cry so it was surprising that he was at the moment. I felt bad for him because it was as if all the regret pushed itself out of him and into a session of tears and sadness

I found myself frowning as well and couple help but pull him into a hug. "Hey, don't blame yourself for what's happened," I started and felt him return the hug. He hugged me tighter and dug his face into my shirt. "We couldn't help it, to be honest. It was meant to happen just like it's meant for us to get them back," we pulled away from the hug and I continued "i promise that I'm going to stop at nothing to get them back. We'll do it together. As a team... And as friends," I flashed him a small smile.

A smile met his face too "Thanks. It's good to know that I can rely on you to have my back, Cass. I appreciate you talking to be, it's something that I couldn't come to the others about, for some reason. Just don't want them seeing me crying like this, I guess," he told me. "Especially Jay because he'd be making fun of me for it," he laughed a little.

I laughed a little as well "Maybe, but I'd whoop his ass for laughing at someone crying for a valid reason," it would be mean for him to laugh at Cole for crying at this, I got why he was and I respected him for being able to. I just felt bad because he couldn't help but take responsibility for it, he cared too much about them. That was the thing, he gave himself way too much responsibility for himself that he's crying, no one deserves that. "Just don't overthink things or let them get to you, you don't deserve the stress," I rubbed his shoulder and made my way for the door before turning to see him. "Remember that," I finished and walked out for my room. For find reason that talk felt good, I guess it was being able to let him talk to me. I'd grown to trust him as a close friend, if he wasn't really one. He somehow managed to basically become my best friend in the last month of being here, something that was so crazy that it was unbelievable, and I was grateful for that. I couldn't ask for a better friend.


	24. Chapter TwentyFour The Smoke In Our Eyes

Chapter Twenty Four: The Smoke in Our Eyes

I plopped onto my bed with a big sigh "Wow, what a conversation," I let my head fall onto my pillow, not believing the talk I just had with Cole. It was a rather deep conversation but I felt as if we gain a little new respect for one another. I knew that he would trust me and that I could trust him, that was enough to gain my respect. I was just surprised that he openly cried to me and even said that he never would with the others. I wondered why he'd do that, was it possible that he had some kind of respect for me that he didn't have for the others? I kind of doubted it because I found it hard to believe that he'd be able to come to me with that instead of the others, who have known each other for a little over two years.

I turned my head to look over at my phone that was laying on my nightstand and reached for it. It was a little too far to reach so I had to lean closer to actually grab it. I turned it on and went to my contacts, stopping at my sisters name. I wanted to call her and talk to her about what happened that day, I needed to talk to her. I hadn't called her for a couple of days and I thought that it'd help me by talking to her about it. She told me to update her on everything that happened and she'd probably hate me for not telling her about it all at first. I sighed and selected her name. I bought the phone up to my ear, listening to it ring and ring. She finally picked up, saying "Hey, Cass."

"Uh, hey Amanda. I wanna talk to you about something," I told her. Now thinking about it, I wasn't 100% sure what I was going to say to her. I mean, how do you just tell someone Well, it turns out there's this person threatening Ninjago and me and the team are fighting them, and things might get ugly. Maybe I could just not tell her that things could get ugly, they was the best idea. That way she wouldn't freak out and tell me to come home or something like that.

"Is everything okay?" She questioned, concern evident in her voice. There she goes, easily being able to tell that something was wrong. Whenever I'm about to tell her something bad she automatically knows that something's up and feels the need to ask me a hundred questions and make sure that I'm okay. "Did something bad happen? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I insisted "and honestly don't know what to say. Long story short: there's a new villain in Ninjago and we're planning on stopping them. I just wanted to let you know so you wouldn't freak out if I told you after we fought them. Just please, please don't freak out or anything, I'll be fine and you don't need to worry about me."

The line was quiet for a second until she spoke up "I don't know what to say. I mean, this is big, but I'm not going to freak out or anything. I just want you to be safe, and not dead."

"Don't worry I won't die or anything, I can handle myself. Plus I've got my team to back me up. Well, all of them except for Jay and Zane."

I quickly explained to her what happened and she was clearly shocked. "What? Are you serious?" She wondered in disbelief, not being used to stuff like that. It was pretty obvious considering that she's never fought before and expected things like this. I couldn't even see her fighting if she wanted to, she'd be beaten in a matter of seconds, I hated to admit it but it was true.

"Yeah. I honestly not sure what we're going to do, we're going to talk it out soon," I started until I heard the door open, looking over to see Shadow coming in and sitting on the foot of her bed. I sat up and turned to her, letting my legs dangle from the side. "Uh, I gotta go Amanda, I'll call you soon. I promise, bye," I heard her say bye as well and I hung up. My eyes shifted over to Shadow on her bed. "Hey."

She looked up at me and sighed "Hey Cass," I could tell that she was down, clearly from what had happened not that long before. I didn't know what she was thinking but I did know that she had hundreds of questions like the rest of us did. "I see you talked to Cole a little while ago."

"Yeah, I did. What did he tell you?" I questioned, raising an eyebrow and curious as to what she had to say. It wasn't hard to guess that she found out from him considering that no one else could have told her about it. Unless he told someone else there wasn't anyone else she could have hear it from. I was hoping that it was him because stories like that would always be twisted somehow if it was told from someone who wasn't even there to begin with.

"He told me that you cheered him up. That was nice of you to do," she told me.

"It was nothing, really. He needed some support and I was there for him. . It wasn't like I didn't want to, I'd be there to cheer any of them up when ever it was needed, I couldn't just sit around and do nothing. "He's a friend so I helped him, I couldn't just walk away from him, Shadow."

"You sure about that?"

"What do you mean? You wouldn't have walked away either." I wasn't sure what she was getting at, because all of us would have talked to Cole if he needed it. We were there for each other and have each other to talk to one another if needed. I just knew that he wouldn't go to the others if he was going to cry, as he said. Maybe he just didn't want to have long time friends seeing him like that and to think of him a some kind of fragile flower. He wasn't anything like that, he was as strong as the earth he represents because it went to show that he wasn't scared of crying.

"Well, the way he describe how you comforted him made it sound like you really cared about what he had to say. I'm not making any accusations but do you-"

I stopped her right there, raising a finger at her "Don't go there," I sighed and rested my head in my hand. "I know what you were going to say and it's not like that, okay? He's just a close friend, almost like my best friend, actually. Is that so bad?" I knew where she was going with things and I wasn't going to admit to anything. Yeah I'd grown close to him in the past month but that meant nothing, we were just close friends and that was all, it was nothing special and it's never come to become anything more.

"No, it's not," she put her hands up in defense. "I was going to say something else but I'm not going to say it."

I looked up to her, determined to hear what she had to say. "No, you're going to finish what you were saying, don't stop what you've already started," I wasn't sure what she was going to say but she was going to tell me whether she liked it or not, she wasn't going to leave until she told me. I wanted to know what she was going to say, it had to be something good or she wouldn't have brought it up in the first place.

She rubbed her chin and looked back over at me. "Not sure if others can see it, or even yourself, but I can see that you two care about each other, being close friends and all. So I just assumed…" I got where she was getting at but that still didn't mean anything. Couldn't two people just be friends and not have to worry about it?

I rubbed my hands over my face and sighed, looking at the ground. "I really don't want to talk about this right now Shadow. I get you're trying to be nice about it and all, but this isn't the time, okay? I'd rather focus on the bigger situations than this, you thinking what I have the feeling you are," I knew what she was going to say, anyone could have, but it really wasn't the time.

"I'm sorry," she claimed as she stood up. "Well, uh, we should head out so we can talk to everyone. She headed for the door but I just stayed on my bed. "You coming or what?"

"Nah," I shook my head and made a fist with both of my hands, letting my head rest on it and my elbows on my knees. "I'll be out in a minute," we shared looks for a couple of seconds before she nodded and left me alone. "Thanks for noticing," I muttered to myself, thinking of her and what she did. I started to ponder about what she brought up, and it got me questioning a couple of things myself. I guess that you could call that a moment but it wasn't really anything, was it? I honestly didn't know what to think about it.

Thinking about it I wondered if she tried to bring up the same thing with him and what he thought about it. He couldn't have been thinking about the same thing as me, could he? I shook my head in denial, I knew he couldn't. "Gah," I sighed and let myself fall back onto my bed, making the bed shake when I landed onto the sheets. "Why do I need to be thinking about this right now?" I questioned myself while looking at the ceiling.

I eventually got lost in my thoughts about the matter, really thinking the matter through, until Nya came running into the room. "My brother, I can't find him!" She claimed. I immediately sat up and looked at her, who continued. "I don't know where he is. Knowing him, I think he went back to the city!"

Was I hearing that correctly? He seriously went back to the city?! "That idiot!" I jumped off my bed and ran past Nya, heading outside. "Kai!" I called out and looked in the sky in hopes of seeing him flying his dragon. "Kai you damn bastard!" I yelled this time. How could he do that?! And why? Did he think that he could leave on his own like he did and none of us notice?

I saw the others come running out as well, all yelling for Kai. "He's an idiot!" Lloyd exclaimed. I looked around at the others and realized that it was just him, Cole, Shadow, Nya, and myself. If we don't get to Kai in time and he somehow gets take too, then just a little over half of us would be left. Plus Kiara would be only two people away from bringing back Alvah. We couldn't let it come to that.

How pissed off I was started to show when I made a fist. I ran and jumped into the air, letting my elemental dragon form under me. I didn't hesitate to fly back for the city, and saw that the others who were behind me had the same idea. I was going to make sure that he was fine because we could afford to lose another one of us, and I didn't want him to get hurt. I knew he was my teammate, but boy did he really piss me off then!


	25. Chapter Twenty Five: I Forgot to Breathe

Chapter Twenty Five:

I kept my focus on flying to the city, I never took my eyes off of the starry sky in front of me. I now knew that the master's mood affected the dragons because mine was flying rather aggressively, as if it was pissed like I was. It was a rough ride the whole way there, but being so pissed I didn't really care about that, I only cared about getting there and finding Kai like his usual self. It was good that all of the shadows left the city, but that didn't necessarily mean that Kiara was gone. I found an open area to land and jumped off my dragon, immediately looking around "Kai!" I called out in hopes of getting a response, but everything was silent.

The others landed about a minute after I did and they ran next to me. "We need to find him and make sure he's okay," Lloyd told us, adding "This time we're sticking together so nothing else bad happens," the rest of us nodded in agreement. It'd be better this way, at least all five of us would be there this time. We were all determined to find him, to make sure that he was okay and not possessed by one of the shadows like Zane and Jay were.

"I hope he's okay," I heard Nya say behind us. I felt bad for her because her own brother was missing and we had no clue what was going to happen to him whatsoever. For all we knew he was already possessed by one of the shadows and Kiara was one step closer to bringing back Alvah. For her sake, I hoped that we got him back.

"Don't worry, Nya," I turned to face her, and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "We're going to find him and he's going to be fine," I took my hand off of her and was thanked for the support "No problem," I wasn't going to let her down, I always lived up to my promise, just like my sister did. I guess that it just ran in the family, since my mom did that as well (from what I heard). She would even fulfill promises that meant Life and Death, and I'd even do that if it came to it. I knew that some people might find that stupid, but that's what I've grown to know: You can't call yourself a hero unless you're willing to fight to the death if it means good will come out of it.

"Let's keep moving, we should find him and get out of here. I'd rather do it sooner than later, if you know what I mean," Shadow spoke up. I got where she was coming from, I wanted that too but we couldn't rush things, because we weren't sure what could happen. It was better to take our time and not rush so things didn't end up going south. I've been in a few situations like that in the past where I've rushed and things ended badly, and regret it in the future. I didn't want to relive any moments like that, to be honest.

"Kai!" the five of us started calling out, but still nothing. I got a better look around the city but there was no signs of him anywhere. "I'm going to get an aerial view of the city, you guys keep searching," I told the other four while summoning by dragon again. They all nodded and I flew off to eventually lose sight of them. I scanned the city below but Kai was still no where to be found. Where the hell was he? It's not like he had the big of a head start so he couldn't have gotten that far ahead of us, right?

I started to fear that he did end up possessed like Zane and Jay were. He could be, not that fast. I would hate if he did especially for Nya's sake, I couldn't imagine losing my sibling like that, even if they weren't hurt or dead. At this point I wasn't sure what to expect out of this, as in how things were going to turn out for the three. I just hoped that it didn't come to that, and if it did then Kiara would have a boatload of trouble coming her way. I wouldn't let her live without seeing revenge for anything she does to them, even what she's done already, let her shadows possess them.

My heart sunk when I saw another cloud of shadow appear in a small part of the city. "Crap," I whispered to myself and flew down to the spot it was coming from. Now on the ground I yelled out "Kai! Yell to me if you're not dead!" instead of hearing Kai I heard Lloyd yelling out to someone… to Shadow? I ran after his voice and turned a corner to see him frantically looking around. "Lloyd! What happened?"

"Cass!" he ran over to me, out of breathe. I wasn't sure what was going on with them but I knew it wasn't good. "We got separated, I got away with Shadow but one of the shadows took her! I can't find her anywhere!" he was still freaking out about it and I attempted to calm him down.

"Lloyd, calm down!" I grabbed his arms and stopped him, looking him in the eyes. "We'll find her, but tell me, why are you freaking out like this? It's like you've seen a ghost or something."

Like I was trying to get him to do he calmed down and looked me in the eyes, fear clearly in his. "No, she's gone like the others are! Why'd I let that happen? She was right there, then she wasn't," I got that she was a teammate and a friend but why was he freaking out so much?

I thought back to the conversation Shadow and I had right before we left, and then thought maybe? "Wait, you care a lot about her, like with how Shadow was saying-" I stopped my sentence and corrected myself "Forget about that. I know what's the problem, it's so clear. You weren't like this with Zane or Jay, or even Kai now. Tell me, Lloyd, do you like her?" That was the only simple explanation.

He gave me a weak nod. "Yeah I do, and I let them take her. It's my fault, I should have protected her. Now she's in the hands of those damn shadows, and Kiara is one person closer to completing her goal. She needs one more. My uncle told me that she can't use me, she needs one of the masters with only one element."

"Then that means," I let my hands fall from his arms. "That means it's either Cole or me," I couldn't let that happen, I could protect myself but what about Cole? From what I could tell he wasn't aware of this and he didn't know how essential it was for him to stay away from the shadows. "I need to go find Cole. Stay here and find Shadow, there's still a slight chance that they haven't taken over her yet, you can still make things right. But for me, I need to find Cole and make sure neither of us come into contact with a shadow."

I didn't think twice about running off to search for Cole now. Things have gotten crazy in such a small period of time. This morning we were all fine, then Kiara attacks Ninjago City, gaining control of Zane and Jay. Then Kai and possibly Shadow. "Cole!" I called out to him. "Cole!" I tried again. I just hoped that he was alright, I'd hate for him to be possessed too. First, Kiara could finally compete her goal of resurrecting Alvah. Second, Cole would be possessed and possibly hurt. If that was true then I'd have an even bigger bone to pick with Kiara, he'd better watch her ass because I'm coming for her if it's the last thing I do.

I ran down the streets of the city until I ran into someone, literally. I fell backwards before looking back up to see Cole. "Cole!" I piped. I stood up, same with Cole. "Thank god you're in one piece!"

"What's wrong?" he questioned. I quickly informed him about Lloyd and how he was looking for Shadow, along with what he told me. "Are you serious?" his eyes widened. I could tell that he was both shocked and concerned. Who wouldn't be after hearing what I told him? "Then we need to stay together. Maybe if we do then nothing will happen."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah. But what we really need to do is get the hell out of here before they can find us," he returned the nod and grabbed my wrist, starting to drag me along with him. I wasn't planning on leaving his side because it would just lead to a higher risk of a shadow finding one of us and possessing them, I couldn't let that happen. I knew that he was on the same page considering that he wouldn't let go of my wrist. His grip was tight around it, I could tell that he wasn't even letting go or he wouldn't have been holding on too tight. My eyes shifted to his face, he looked determined to get us out, same with me. I smiled at his determination, admiring it. I shook my head to forget about what I just thought, this was some serious business and it was no time for that.

I started to question why I was so concerned with it, it's not like it was a big deal. I was just thankful that he was so determined. He would too if we switched shoes, but that wasn't the case here. It was more than that, I cared too much for it to be plain and simple like I wanted it to be. I looked back over him and thought about the conversation Shadow and I had again, wondering if it really meant something, if any of it was true. I knew it did, there was no questioning it. We were great friends, we've gained a bond that no one else on the team has (Besides Lloyd and Shadow, I don't really know at this point, since I don't know much about the bond between them). I'm overthinking this whole situation. I'm caring too much about him. It was possible…

Still lost in my thoughts, I felt something grab my foot and yank me a good dozen yards away from where I was. "Ah!" I wailed as the back of my head hit a building behind me. I looked up to see Cole being punched by a shadow, and Kiara walking over to him.

I smirk formed on her face as she stood over Cole who was punched to the ground. "It's good to do the last one on my own," she formed a ball of shadow around her arm and brought it close to Cole. I knew what she was about to do, force it into him so that it'd possess him like with the others. I couldn't let her do that, not while I was there!

"No!" I barked and got up, immediately dashing at her. I tackled her to the ground before she could do anything to Cole. As I did that he was grabbed by a shadow and thrown into a wall a little ways from us. Kiara ended up on top of me which made the situation worse than before. Instead of it being Cole, she started to bring her shadow covered hand up to my chest but I grabbed her wrist to stop her. "I'm not going to let you win! I won't let you use me, or Cole! and I swear to God if you hurt him in the process, I will personally take you down!"


	26. Chapter Twenty Six: Burning Colors

Chapter Twenty Six: Burning Colors

"I will personally take you down!" I snarled at Kiara. I didn't care what it took but I'd fight her and defeat her, no matter the cost. I couldn't let her go through with her plan, it would just end in disaster and I've come to know that you need to fight with all that you can and never give up. "You're just a damn bastard that thinks they can win, but you can't!" I yelled at her again.

"That's where you're wrong," she smirked at me. I continued to struggle from her grip but it was no use, there was no budging. At this point my only options were to prevent her from finishing what she started or wait for Cole to help, but that wasn't going to happen any time soon because he was still on the ground. At least he wasn't being attacked by a shadow. My eyes shifted back up to Kiara who punched me with her free hand, making me let go of her other. She finally managed to bring her hand above my chest "I was looking forward to using him," she looked over at Cole then back down to me "but I guess that you'll have to do."

"Screw you and your shadows!" I screamed in her face, even though I knew it did nothing. A pain instantly shot through my chest when she placed her shadow covered hand right above my heart. It slowly went away when Cole jumped at her and tackled her off of me. The pain wasn't going away, and for some reason it quickly got worse again, worse than when it first started. I let out a wail, not wanting to hold in the pain. I turned myself over and lifted myself off of the ground with my hands, still kneeling on the ground. I gasped for breath as it was hard to at the moment, damn was it the worst feeling in the world! My vision started to fade and my body slowly started going numb. It started with my chest, slowly making it's way down my arms and torso, down to my legs. I fell onto my side, still in pain. My eyes focused on Cole and Kiara fighting, the last thing I saw before blacking out…

...I could faintly hear the fighting between Cole and Kiara who were both a little ways from me. I used my hands to sit myself up and finally regained my full eye sight. I couldn't explain it but this sudden feeling of anger and fate filled my body. It couldn't have been good since Kiara was so close to putting the shadow into me, what if she did? Cole looked over at me, "Cass, stay back, I've got the fight under control!" I watched as the two fought each other, throwing their elements at one another. Kiara looked at me as well which left her wide open for Cole to punch her and he took the opportunity. He didn't hesitate to run over to me, and help me up. "We need to get out of here, and fast."

The unexplainable anger and hatred inside of me grew, I had the feeling that things could possibly end badly. I wanted to tell him what was wrong but I couldn't bring myself to do it, I knew I was possessed. I hit him away from me, causing him to fall backwards onto the ground. "That's not going to happen, pretty boy," I hissed at him. I could see the shock in his eyes, it felt like a knife was impaling my heart when I said that, I didn't want to say it. I wouldn't have it if I wasn't in the situation I was in. "Hate to break it to you, but I'm possessing your dear friend here," the thing inside of me made me smirk at Cole. I walked up to him, him still sitting on the ground in shock, and stood over him. I knelt down beside him and his eyes followed mine. I smirked and pulled myself closer to his face. "I bet you wish i was still the same old Cass, don't you? The one that'd be there to comfort you in a flash. The one that could always make you smile. But that Cass isn't coming back," I brought my mouth close to his ear and whispered "and there's nothing you could do about that."

His facial expression remained shocked for a moment before turning into a raged look. "No, your wrong," he growled at me and pushed me off of him but used my wind to keep myself standing and from falling onto my back. He stood up and I could tell that he was pissed. Not at me, but at the shadow possessing me. It pained me to see what was going on, I could see every last second of it but could do a thing about it, I couldn't even control my own body. "I know she's still in there, you're only a damn shadow in control of her. She strong enough to break free, I believe that she can!" I just wanted to tell him that I was there, aware of everything happening, but i couldn't. Being able to see everything made it worse because I knew that he was right there but I couldn't do anything. I wanted to scream I'm fine I'm right here! but the words ceased to slip from my mouth.

In a rage from the shadow, I created a ball of wind and didn't think twice about hitting Cole with it. He blocked the attack with a wall of rock, letting it fall back to it's original spot. "Snap out of it Cass! Fight the shadow, don't let them eat away at you!" he choked. "Just fight, get control and beat them! I know you can do it!" hearing him say that made me feel better and all the more determined to rip them of their control over me.

I stopped and stared at Cole, attempting to do that. Unfortunately it wasn't working as well as I was hoping it was. I created another sphere of Wind around my hand and glared at him, but I slowly got it to weaken. Come on, you're better than this, you're stronger I thought to myself as I kept trying to fight. I should have been able to overpower the shadow, as it wasn't in full control just yet, but it was hard. It's like I was trapped in the darkness and couldn't reach the dim light I could see. If only I could reach it and find my way out. I wanted to reach to so badly to end the madness but it was proving to be a great challenge.

I shook my head, the shadow making me lose control of myself once again. I shot myself at Cole with a huge gust of wind and tackled him the the ground, rolling a few feet before pinning him to the ground. I felt the hatred burning more inside of me, hate that would never have been there if I was my normal self. Now I was possessed by a shadow, a creature known for its dark presence and emotions. As long as it was inside of me, I'd be angry and hateful and anything in my way and Cole was that thing in this case. The problem was that I was really since I had no reason to be. He's never done anything wrong, never pissed me off, I just hoped he knew that.

He managed to one of his hands from my grip and used it to make a strip of earth wrap around me and pull me off of him. I was about to hit a wall but I stopped myself before I came into contact with it. "Get out of her you bastard!" he snapped, aiming for the shadow. I knew that he was pissed at it, I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. I ran at him and threw a punch at him but he grabbed my fist mid air. "Don't say that she's gone, because she's not. I have faith in her that she can overpower you and kick your ass back to hell," I tried to punch him again with the other hand, which he grabbed as well. He looked me in the eyes, I knew that it was directed towards me, and he quavered "I know you're in there, so please come back."

I let a strong barrier of wind form around us, getting angrier. It was the shadow getting angrier because I still had no reason to be angry myself. I pushed him back so that my hands were free, now just face-to-face with him. I (the shadow) moved my hand up, ready to throw a rageful gust of wind at Cole, but I froze. I didn't want to do that, I didn't want to hurt him. Yeah, the shadow in me was strong, but my friendship with him was stronger, I wouldn't let him get hurt like he was about to. I started to breathe heavily, letting my hand fall to my side, the wind still around my hand. I looked down at my arm to see a dark shade of purple tracing the path of my veins, the wind getting stronger. I looked back up to Cole, saying "I'm sorry," I brought my hand back up, pointed in his direction. I brought my fist back and let it go flying. The hit missed Cole by a few inches and flew right passed him. It broke the barrier around us, the wind crashing against our faces.

His eyes widened, shocked once more. Instead of the attack hitting him it hit Kiara who was behind him, watching the fight. She was forced back into a pole, her letting out a wail. I walked passed Cole, not looking him in the eyes, pissed off at her. This time it was me who was angry, not the shadow. I wasn't sure what I did but I couldn't feel it anymore, it was like it was gone. I was in full control, I could finally fight her like I was planning on. I was going to take her down, fight her until she went down. I wasn't going to let her win, not after what she's done. I was going to defeat her and send her ass to hell, wheter it was the last thing I did. "You're going down!"


	27. Chapter 27 The Good The Bad and The Ugly

Chapter Twenty Seven: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

AN~ I shall warn you before you read: there is blood in this chapter, as there is a fight in it. And for that guest who wanted me to include their OC: Thanks for taking interest in my story. But about the OC, I'm not looking to add any more OCs. I hope you understand. But I will say that your OC is interesting, though!

"You're going down!" As she started getting up, using the pole she flew into, I kept walking in her direction. She looked over at me with a glare and it didn't take much to realize that she was overly pissed at us. She let shadows surround her arms when she finally stood herself up. I got a good look in her eyes and I could see them slowly turning black. I wasn't even going to try to talk her out of any of this because based off of the anger that I could see in her, there was no question that it wasn't even going to work. She was too missed to even talk to which left only one option: to beat her in a fight.

"I'd like to see you even try!" she yelled, running at me. "Like I said, I wouldn't let anything stop me from succeeding, especially someone like you!" I wasn't sure what she meant by that, but she was wrong, I was going to stop her whether she like it or not. She obviously wouldn't like that, but it wouldn't stop me from defeating her, I just didn't care about her thoughts on the matter. She was a bad guy and they needed to be stopped, no matter how hard I needed to work for it. Before she could reach me to throw a punch I kicked the ground, creating a tornado like gust of wind under her that sent her flying over me.

I turned to see her land between Cole and I, both still ready to fight. I never thought I'd see Cole and I fighting a bad guy with each other, but there I was now, doing exactly that. I nodded at him, getting a nod back. As if we were thinking the same thing we both ran at her, with our elements in our fists. She jumped up and grabbed our wrists, throwing us into each other. "Whoa!" I let out as I smashed into Cole and fell backwards onto the hard ground. I slowly propped myself up with my hands to see Kiara starting to run off in the opposite direction of us. "Cole, she's getting away!" In informed him, not sure if he was aware of it yet or not. I didn't hesitate to get up, helping Cole up as well, and start dashing after her.

She got a little bit of a head start but that couldn't stop me. I lost sight of her for a minute until I spotted her again. "You keep running after her," I heard Cole tell me, who was pointing down another street "I'll be right back," I tried to stop him but he was already gone. Damn, what the hell was he planning? I wasn't going to question him now because I had the feeling it was something good, I trusted him enough to. I kept running after Kiara, getting a couple of shadows thrown back at me on the way.

I took a deep breath to get some more air in my lungs and started to run a little bit faster. I formed wind in my hand and threw it at her, it hitting her feet and causing her to trip a little. "Why don't you just stop already?! I don't have damn time for this!" she seemed to be even more pissed at this point.

"In your dreams!" I yelled to her. Out of no where the street in front of us started to collapse, making us both stop. There was no doubt in my mind that it was Cole, no one else could do that like he could, him being of the only master of Earth around. I saw him running on the other side, and use the street below him to get across the large crack in it. He did a flip mid air and perfectly landed on his feet, now making it so Kiara was in between us like before. I took the time to create the barrier of wind around us, the most powerful thing that I could do as the Master of Wind. What I liked about it was that while it was formed, no one could get in and out, no matter how hard they tried. Even other elemental masters couldn't, even if they used their own most powerful moves as well. "Just give up now! There's no use fighting, because you'll never win, you don't stand a chance now!"

"Screw you! I'll win and you'll be the one who loses!" She yelled and ran at me with a punch. I grabbed her fist and threw her in Cole's direction, who exchanged a couple of punches with Kiara. I ran over to them and punched her myself, she didn't stand a chance against us, not when it was two against one. It made things even better by the fact that we were both Elementals as well. "Why do you two need to be so difficult? Just go down already, would you?!"

Something grabbed my ankle and started dragging away from the fight. "What the hell! I tried to get out but it being a shadow, of course, I couldn't touch it and you can't fight what you can't come into contact with. I felt the pavement I was getting dragged on rubbing against my skin, that'd leave one hell of an abrasion. I knew they because is sure hurt like hell! It ended up throwing me into a pole that happened to be conveniently stuck inside the wind barrier with us. "Gah!" I let out when I felt a sharp sensation run down my back, then my stomach when I hit the cold hard ground.

I slowly got up too see the other two still fighting. I saw Cole get punched a couple of times, causing his nose to start bleeding a little. I punched enough wind at Kiara to get her away from him, getting a "Thanks!" From Cole. I sent a gesture they was similar to a soldier's salute his way, basically saying 'no problem'. I couldn't explain it but I saw Kiara holding what appeared to be a scythe made out of Shadow. I wasn't exactly sure what she was planning on doing with a scythe made out of shadow because it wasn't like it was gonna be sharp. I found out that I underestimate it when she managed to hit my upper left arm with it, sending another sharp pain through my body.

I took a couple of steps back and covered the wound with my hand. "Damn that hurt!" I claimed, kicking some wind in her direction. She just dodged it and ran at me with her scythe in hand. She took a couple of swings at me again but I dodged them all. Well, all excusing one that just barely skimmed my cheek. What was with that! It send a burning sensation through me when I got the cuts, I was guessing it was referring to hell or something. I kicked the ground like before and got the scythe out of Kiara's hands, watching it vanish as it crashed to the ground.

Cole came up behind her and punched her, getting a punch back from her. I punched her as well, getting punched in the jaw like with Cole. As she was about to throw another punch at Cole I took the opportunity of her distraction to grab her from behind. She struggled out, demanding "Let go of me!" I wouldn't budge though, which gave Cole an open shot at a punch, which he did. He gave her a couple more, stopping when she started to breath a little heavily. "You two are such nuisances, you know that right?" She said in a cold voice with her head to the ground. At the corner of my eye I saw shadows starting to gather under her, then her creating one big energy ball with them. "And any nuisance to me is to be dealt with immediately!" She let the thing hit Cole in front of her, sending him flying back a little ways from us.

She elbowed me in the jaw, causing it to hurt even more, and turned around to only kick me onto the ground. As I stayed there with only my hands keeping me up, she used shadow to sit me up and used them as chain like things to keep me from moving. She created another weapon, a sword, and pointed it at me. I glared up at her. "Go ahead, do it," I dared her. "I can take it, anything you throw at me won't hurt me enough to stop fighting, you bastard!" Just as I finished she swung her sword and it sliced through me chest. Luckily it wasn't that deep, it wouldn't be that hard to patch up later on. It still hurt though, I tried not to show that. After that was s small one on my right arm, then my forehead. Those ones weren't as bad, as they only grazed me like the one on my cheek from before.

"I knew you were pathetic, but I don't know you were this pathetic," she claimed, wiping off my blood from her shadow sword. "Those who are pathetic don't deserve to live, not in the world I'm going to create by bringing back Alvah."

"No you won't!" I barked at her. "Don't forget you still need one more of us. But you failed your last attempt!" she was still missing a master, so she couldn't go through with it. And I was going to keep it they way. I continued to struggle out of the shadows but they wouldn't budge. I stopped when I saw her going over to Cole who was still lying on the ground. "Don't," I whispered "If you hurt him, I swear to get you damn bastard, I will end you and send your sorry ass down to hell!"

She just laughed, stopping at Cole. "Sorry to break it to you, but that's not gonna happen," she grabbed him but the shirt and created another ball of shadows in her hand. "It's such a shame, he was such a pretty boy. Too bad it's going to be the end of him, along with the other four," she turned to me. "And don't think I forgot about you and Mr. Green Bean, I've got plenty more for the two of you."

As I watched her bring her hand close to him I felt a couple of tears escaping my eyes which burned my cut as they ran over it. "No!" I screamed at her, managing to escape one of the shadows and punched wind at her. As it hit her the other shadow vanished, making me free now. I ran past Cole with the strongest spheres of wind I'd ever created around my first and punched her. "You are be biggest idiot I've ever seen if you think I'd let you hurt my friend! To let you win! There's no way in hell!" I punched her again, her falling to the ground. I stood over her, ready to punch again, but stopped when she didn't move. I lowered my first, keeping the spheres of wind formed. My eyes widened when I saw her body slowly sinking into a shadow below her.

As she did, she whispered "Looks like you've won this round. But remember, there's always plenty more where that came from," with a large smirk on her face, she was gone.

"No!" I punched my wind at the ground where she was but it only blasted off of the pavement and back into my face. I took a couple of deep breaths before I finally looked over at Cole. I looked back down at the spot where Kiara had been and decided that it was more important to go help him then wait for someone who wasn't coming back. I ran over to him and knelt down beside him. "Cole," I started but got no response "Cole, come on, it's over, we're safe now," still nothing. "Shit," I whispered and brought my ear down to his mouth in hopes of hearing s breath, which I did. I sighed with relief, glad that he wasn't dead or anything. I let the barrier around us finally die down, knowing they we weren't in any immediate danger.

I sat him up and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and mine around his. I started to take us both to a fountain in the center of town where I sat him against. He has a couple cuts himself so I was determined to clean them up. I took off my glove and dipped it in the fountain water, and dabbed it on his wounds. After I took off my top layer shirt, leaving me with just my black tank top, and ripped it so I had some cloth to cover the wounds with. I did exactly that, leaving some for myself. I scooted over a little bit and took off my other glove, getting it wet. I held it above my biggest cut, the one on my arm, hesitant at first to clean it. I sighed "This is gonna hurt," I bit my lip as it hurt when I finally brought it up to the cut. "Damn," I muttered before quickly cleaning up the rest.

I placed my glove next to me and wrapped up the wounds on my arm. I let my head fall back into the fountain and let out another sigh. It was good to just sit there for a moment and not have to worry about fighting anyone or anything, I could just take a break. It was better that I knew that Cole was safe too, I was honestly more worried about him than myself. I had the habit of caring more about others than myself, but I knew it was different here. Normally I did it out because I wanted to, but in this situation I needed to. I wasn't going to let him get hurt and keep him safe, I didn't have to do it as much as I did, but that's where things ended up. I would have done it for the others two, but not in the same way with him. With them it would have been from my mind but this was coming from my heart. I wasn't exactly sure how but I knew I care about him a lot, which caused me to question if I care about him in the way they I didn't about others. Maybe Shadow was right about it, with the point she was starting to bring up. It was a possibility, and I wasn't going to just ignore it.


	28. Chapter Twenty Eight: Nothing Town

Chapter Twenty Eight: Nothing Town

AN~ okay so this is the last chapter in this book, gonna be doing a book on the ghost season, I'll publish it in about a week.

I closed my eyes with my mind empty for a couple of minutes before I heard "Cass?" my eyes shot open and I glanced over in Cole's direction, who was now awake and sitting up. I was relieved that he was awake now, I couldn't help but pull him into a hug. He seemed surprised at first but returned the hug "What the hell happened? Last I remembered we were fighting Kiara, but then I blacked out and now I'm here," I wasn't sure how I could explain the things that happened between the time of that and now, there was so much to say.

I didn't answer him at first but then I simply said "I fought her off, and now she's gone, that's pretty much it," I pulled away from the hug. I didn't want to go into great detail about it because I didn't want him to be asking me an ass load of questions. "I also might have saved your ass back there, then patched you up, not that big of a deal," I didn't think that much about it. I mean, I wouldn't just leave him there to die so I took care of him. I knew how patch people up anyways, my sister showed me a couple of things and I even took a first aid course. Even I didn't, it's not rocket science to patch someone up, as long as you've got something to use as bandages and you clean the wound you're good to go, you don't want to take the risk for infection and/or further bleeding.

He smiled "Thanks, I don't know what I would have done without you," he laughed. Well, he would have been left there alone and probably would have bleed out and died, so I kind of did save his life in a sense. "I owe you one, seriously," he rubbed the back of his head, questioning "I feel so damn light headed. Should I be worried?"

"You feeling anything else? Different in your vision? Nausea? Maybe even a headache?" now thinking about it, he did his the ground pretty hard back there. Plus he lost consciousness and is feeling light headed. I hoped he didn't have a concussion like it sounded.

"Actually yeah. I'm feeling a little drowsy and I'm nauseous. Why?"

I ran a hand through my messed up hair and I sighed "I think you might have a concussion, Cole," I told him. Those were only a few signs of a concussion do it was pretty easy to believe that he could in fact have one. I turned to him, adding "You need to keep it easy for a while, okay?"

He sighed as well "Well that sucks," he sat back onto the fountain, turning to me "Good thing you could say that," he was right, if he or anyone else didn't catch on things could have been worse, but now he knows to watch out for it and keep it easy. But if he did anything else stupid, then he could do any further damage to what was already done. I was just glad they he'd be okay, I wouldn't know what I'd do if anything else happened to him.

"Yeah, I guess it is," my smiled slowly turned into a frown. For some reason I started thinking about the bigger picture here, I wasn't sure how the others were doing at this point. We were there, pretty much in one piece, and we had no clue where the others were and if they were alright. I hoped that they were, it would be really bad for one of us to get seriously hurt.

"You okay?" I heard Cole ask me "You seem down."

"Uh, yeah, I am," I lied to him, not wanting to make him worry about me. That was the last thing I wanted, someone to be worried about me. After that, I felt a tear trickle down my cheek, burning the cut on it once more. "Actually, I'm not, I'm not okay," I finally told him. I decided that I didn't want to keep it inside, it wasn't good to keep something that was bothering you to yourself. And he openly talked to be about the thing before, he even cried in front of me, so why couldn't I do the same? "I watched her grab you and almost took you like she did with the others. What the hell would I do if she did? There would have only been three people left: Nya, Lloyd, and Me. It wouldn't have gone any better if that happened. Damn," I ran my hands down my sweaty and bloody face. "I was so damn scared, okay? I still fought her off, though, all out of anger. She pissed me off so much!" I claimed with anger in my voice, punching the ground.

I took a couple of deep breaths and looked over at Cole, who remained silent and shocked. I could clearly see the sorrow in his eyes, "I'm sorry about that. Now I wish I was there to help you, you didn't deserve that," he comforted me. No one deserves that, no one shouldn't have had to go through it. I just hugged my knees and didn't say anything, making him scoot over to me and rub my shoulder "Hey, at least we're both here in one piece, right? We're alive to live another tomorrow."

"I guess," I shrugged. I sat there, still saying anything. I just wanted tomorrow to be fine, not having to worry about a single thing and to be safe. The thing that I hated the most was the feeling of almost losing him like we originally did with the others, like I really did with my parents. Lost in my thoughts again, I could faintly hear someone calling out to us. I looked up to see Nya and Jay running to us. "Oh my god," the two of us stood up and waited for the two to catch up to us.

"You guys are alright!" Nya smiled, questioning "What happened to you two?" I could see the concern in her eyes as she looked at the wounds we had gotten in the fight not that long before.

"We kind of got into a fight with Kiara, and I beat her, so she's gone. Things are better now," I turned to Jay. I assumed now that he was fine that the others were as well. "Nice to see you back to normal, same with the others I'm gonna take it."

"Yeah," he nodded "We ran into the others. They went back to the monastery, and we stayed back to find you two. We really should get back now, they're worried about you two when we couldn't find you. Let's go," he quickly formed his dragon and let Nya hop on with him.

Cole and I nodded, doing the same, and the four of us were off back for monastery. The whole ride back was rather quiet, I could tell that all of us were too busy thinking about what happened. In no time we finally got back, hopping off of our dragons and letting them vanish. We walked back in and looked down the hallway, then walked down to where the others are. They all smiled when they saw the four of us. "Good to see you back," Kai spoke up.

"Well, same to you too," I told him, turning to the others and adding "She's gone, and we've won. We beat her ass."

"Good!" Shadow smiled, giving me a pat on the back. She looked down at my arm wrapped in my ripped up shirt. "You should really clean that up better, you know. Come on, I'll help you," she offered.

"I don't really need help with it," I insisted "but you can come with me if you want," she nodded and we made our way for the medical room where all the good stuff was. I approached her help but I could handle patching myself up on my own, I probably knew more about it than she did, Nya really being the only one who did. I walked over to the cabinet and grabbed a roll of bandages as a towel, then over to the sink. I turned it on and got it damn, starting to wipe the blood off of me. "I know that this is probably a bad time, considering the things that have happened today, but I wanna lighten the mood. I know that you have feelings for Lloyd, and in the mix of things today, he let it slip that he feels the same."

Her eyes widened a little bit then her face went as red as a tomato, if not more. "Really?" She asked as if she didn't believe it.

"Yeah," I nodded with a smile, wiping the last bit of blood off of my face. I lifted up my tank top to reveal the wound on my side and I attempted to wrap the bandages around it, but it stung when they came into contact. I put the pain aside and continued anyways. "You two need to talk it out, seriously. You're not gonna leave it in the dark, I'm not going to let you."

She crossed her arms "What about you and Cake Boy?"

"Hey, that's my nickname for him!" I claimed, tying the end of the bandage in place so that it wouldn't come undone, and moved on to the one on my arm. "And what did I tell you before, there's nothing between us, not like with you Lloyd."

"But you're not denying it, are you! That you have some kind of feelings!"

"No, I never denied it, but I didn't admit to anything either," I finally finished properly patching myself up. I turned around and hit a smile that I couldn't help but to form. "But you know what, you may just be right about that..." I let her have her fun with coming to the conclusion that I might have, I was starting to believe myself that I did. But I wasn't going to let it get in the way of things, I didn't want to bring it up now.

"I knew it!" She bragged as we walked back to the others. Back with them we celebrated our victory with a big dinner, the best Zane has made the whole time I was there. I smiled at what I could call a family (other than my actual sister), I was glad that I was there with them. A month ago I was living a normal life where things were crazy quiet, and now I was here where things were always crazy loud. I had friends that I could rely on, that I could enjoy life with. I couldn't ask for better people who I knew I'd grow closer to.


End file.
